NBC News correspondent Kate Snow will debut the first of her two-part series on transgender kids on “NBC Nightly News” tonight. But already, previews of the series, which profiles two transgender children, five-year-old Jacob Lemay and eight-year-old Malisa Phillips, and their parents, have launched a huge reaction on social media. As of this writing, this video post on the “NBC Nightly News” Facebook page has nearly 2.9 million views, with 47,000 likes and nearly 47,000 shares.
The series comes amid speculation around an upcoming ABC News interview with Bruce Jenner, who is widely expected to talk about his own gender identity, though insiders tell TVNewser the NBC News series on Jacob and Malisa had been in the works for months.
Jacob’s mother Mimi wrote an essay in the Boston Globe and on Medium about raising Jacob, and Malisa’s story drew national attention earlier this year when her grandfather, Rep. Mike Honda, announced via Twitter his hope his granddaughter would be safe and free from harassment.
When Mimi and Joe Lemay’s baby was born in 2010, they heard the three words every parent waits to hear: “It’s a girl.” But by age two, their child was saying “I’m a boy.” Mimi hoped this “obsession with being a boy would go away,” but it only grew stronger. Now, in a rare and candid interview, they share in their own words why they decided to let their five-year-old transgender son Jacob transition and live publicly as a boy.NBC’s Kate Snow will have more on Transgender Kids beginning Tuesday night on Nightly News.
Posted by NBC Nightly News on Monday, April 20, 2015
Following the East Coast broadcast of “NBC Nightly News” tonight (at approximately 6:45pmET), Snow will be leading a Facebook chat on the Nightly News page.