Ariela Barer

Creator Context

Summary

Ariela Barer is a Mexican-Jewish American actress, screenwriter, and producer, publicly identified as queer, whose career runs from child acting through Marvel's Runaways, One Day at a Time, Rebel, Saved by the Bell, The Last of Us, and her signature writer-producer credit on How to Blow Up a Pipeline. On Runaways she played Gert Yorkes, a social-justice feminist who leads a club called Undermining the Patriarchy; she discussed that role in interviews about feminism, anxiety and healthcare access, and representation, saying that taking up public space with any identity other than cis white male is powerful in itself, and she cited feminist writers such as bell hooks and Rebecca Solnit. She came out on social media in 2017, later played queer characters including Chloe, head of an LGBT student club, on Saved by the Bell, and has appeared on queer media and podcasts. She has described herself as politically inclined since childhood, volunteered for Barack Obama as a kid, attended climate marches with her parents, went to a Mike Brown protest as a teenager, joined Black Lives Matter protests, and used social media to share resources on asylum at the border, transgender youth, and solidarity among oppressed groups, while also saying she is wary of performative celebrity activism. As a writer she put politics at the center of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, adapting Andreas Malm's case for climate sabotage, consulting activists, linking fossil-fuel harm to racial inequality and the U.S. police state, and promoting the film as a way to make young radical, including queer, left politics palatable as genre entertainment. That body of interviews, protest history, and original work makes activist climate politics and a feminist, queer, racial-justice frame a durable public persona rather than a one-off credit.