--- title: MTV Faking It Showrunner Carter Covington: Pretend Lesbians Realistic description: The showrunner of "the most accepting and tolerant high school that we’ve seen on television" talks to TIME canonical: https://time.com/68148/carter-covington-faking-it-mtv/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-04-22T14:00:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T07:22:59.955Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: MTV Faking It Showrunner Carter Covington: Pretend Lesbians Realistic og:description: The showrunner of "the most accepting and tolerant high school that we’ve seen on television" talks to TIME og:url: https://time.com/68148/carter-covington-faking-it-mtv/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf7e7c4fcbf9b7077/69868b49cd6848861409435b/140418-covington.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Carter Covington og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: MTV Faking It Showrunner Carter Covington: Pretend Lesbians Realistic twitter:description: The showrunner of "the most accepting and tolerant high school that we’ve seen on television" talks to TIME twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf7e7c4fcbf9b7077/69868b49cd6848861409435b/140418-covington.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # New Pretending-To-Be-Gay Show _Faking It_ Is Actually Realistic, Says Showrunner > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 22, 2014 2:00 PM UTC  Carter Covington attends the Viacom TCA Press Tour Winter 2014 on Jan. 10, 2014 in Pasadena, Calif. Carter Covington attends the Viacom TCA Press Tour Winter 2014 on Jan. 10, 2014 in Pasadena, Calif.Jason Kempin / Getty Images for Viacom  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 22, 2014 2:00 PM UTC When Carter Covington first heard the premise for the new MTV show _Faking It_, which premieres April 22, it seemed unrealistic — and maybe offensive. The show is about two high-school girls who pretend to be lesbians in order to become popular [so that they can get elected homecoming queens](http://time.com/27233/faking-it-mtv-lesbian-comedy/); Covington worried that they would only be faking it “because straight guys find lesbians hot.” But now, Covington is _Faking It_’s showrunner, and the plot is based partially on his own real-life experiences. “I said, if I tried this, I really wanted one of the girls to have genuine feelings for her best friend, and to explore what that feels like,” he tells TIME. “That’s something as a gay man that I went through in the closet in high school, to have crushes on my friends and not be able to say anything.” And that’s not where the real-life inspirations stop. Though the fictional high school _Faking It_ presents is a far cry from the stereotypical schools of pop culture — jocks and cheerleaders on top, with kids subjected to bullying for being different —Covington says that his vision of high school is just an exaggerated version of reality, not a fairy tale. “It isn’t this monolith that we expect, that high school’s just this horrible place for gay youth,” Covington says, citing his experience working with the Trevor Project as the source for his knowledge of the wide variety of experiences among today’s gay teens. “There are places where you’re celebrated for being an individual. I decided to take that and run with it and turn it into a high school that is the most accepting and tolerant high school that we’ve seen on television.” And, he says, high school is the right time to set a story like _Faking It:_ characters are of the age when “experimentation and questioning” is normal and, for teens of every orientation, sexuality is being defined. Covington notes that, until _Faking It_, he had no particular desire to revisit high school creatively after working on _Greek_ and _10 Things I Hate_ _About You_. “If you told me five years ago that I’d be doing another high school show I would have laughed,” he says; “I thought I’d said everything I had to say.” In a way, those other shows led him to this one: he was first brought on by Mina Lefevre, who [came to MTV in early 2013](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mtv-hires-abc-family-exec-417101) as head of scripted programming from ABC Family, home of Covington’s previous shows _Greek_ and _10 Things I Hate About You_. Covington raves about working with the network; he claims that the relatively low budgets available to him as a showrunner at MTV — compared to the budget for a big network drama — were a big help, and may be part of the reason why the network has become a reliable home of innovative scripted programming for teens (like _Awkward_). He was encouraged to cast unknowns, to reach out to crew from the indie film world and to work with people who might be dismissed as unqualified if there were more money to hire TV veterans. “Once everybody accepts that they have half as much money as a network show but need it to look the same \[as a network show\], people get creative,” he says. But also he knows that the MTV audience is picky and tough to impress. Still, though audiences have yet to decide whether they’ll actually watch _Faking It_, there’s one thing Covington isn’t so worried about: whether they’ll think it’s, well, fake. “My hope is that the MTV audience will watch this and find it funny but also be like, we’re just _now_ getting a show like this?” he says. “If you look around the country, attitudes are changing about LGBT rights, but they’ve already changed among young people.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/68148/carter-covington-faking-it-mtv/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/68148/carter-covington-faking-it-mtv/"},"headline":"New Pretending-To-Be-Gay Show Faking It Is Actually Realistic, Says Showrunner","datePublished":"2014-04-22T14:00:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T07:22:59.955Z","description":"The showrunner of \"the most accepting and tolerant high school that we’ve seen on television\" talks to TIME","url":"https://time.com/68148/carter-covington-faking-it-mtv/","keywords":["Television","High School","MTV","Lesbian","teen","gay","TV","LGBTQ"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf7e7c4fcbf9b7077/69868b49cd6848861409435b/140418-covington.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf7e7c4fcbf9b7077/69868b49cd6848861409435b/140418-covington.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Carter Covington","caption":"Carter Covington","creditText":"Jason Kempin / Getty Images for Viacom","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/68148/carter-covington-faking-it-mtv/","name":"New Pretending-To-Be-Gay Show Faking It Is Actually Realistic, Says Showrunner"}}]}] ```