In a double-header this week with ABC News, the cast and creative team of The Prom discussed their personal experience with high school and the comfort they hope bring to struggling LGBTQ+ youth today.

"She's based on real individuals and real people who have gone through this. It's incredible for so many reasons that this story's being told, because kids still go through this every day," said Tony nominee Caitlin Kinnunen, who plays Emma, a young lesbian whose desire to bring her girlfriend to the prom dance kicks off the plot. "They're being expelled, they're being hated and shunned in their communities every single year, and that's insane to me."

Watch more of the team talk below, and further down, watch a one-on-one interview with Brooks Ashmanskas.

Tony nominee Ashmanskas also chatted with ABC about the The Prom’s start, his own coming out story, and who he told first when he discovered he received his second Tony nomination.

The show’s LGBTQ+ themes manifest in various ways, from high schoolers coming out to mothers canceling the prom to avoid same-sex dates. Of his own coming out experience, Ashmanskas said, “I was fortunate in that my parents were fantastic people, so there was no problem with it. Even the mother in this…she just says ‘I just don’t want you to have a hard life.’ And I can even see my own mother saying that to me in one way or another.”

Watch the interview below.