Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Emily & Lexi Gee. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Emily & Lexi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

We’re Lexi and Emily Gee, the founders of Sleepy Cloud Productions. Our first major project, Freak & Donna, has been exceptionally meaningful for both of us. As two nonbinary creators who love tv, we wanted to see more people like ourselves represented on screen. After spending weeks, months, lifetimes searching for content where we felt seen and accurately portrayed by real queer and trans and nonbinary people, we realized maybe it was time we make the thing we wanted to see.

Both of us have a 10-year background in film and television. Emily’s experience in development and production, and Lexi’s experience in post-production meant we knew we could combine our skills to fulfill the vision we had. We assembled a largely queer and trans team, where we were able to foster a creative environment, filled with energy and acceptance. We felt like we were able to support our community as they supported us through the process. The outcome was this beautiful web series, Freak & Donna, and a community centered around LGBTQ+ art and joy.

We also grew closer as partners in business and life — we began developing this series and forming our production company just a year after we got married. It’s been a practice of learning to work together, troubleshooting under stress, and communicating empathetically with each other. Freak & Donna has helped us make our dreams feel real.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We are Lexi and Emily Gee, founders of Sleepy Cloud Productions and creators of the web series Freak & Donna. Lexi has worked as an editor for over 10 years in NYC, and Emily has worked in production and development for the last decade across the tri-state area. We met in 2016 on a rainy July day, got married in 2022 on a sunny July day, and began our creative life as professional collaborators in January 2023. We were in our home discussing character ideas and names, just shouting out whatever came to our brain. We had an instantaneous hivemind moment of identifying a name that stood out to us as different than the others – Freak. Who is Freak? What are they like? Who is their best friend? Donna. There it was: it came to us all at once and then became more refined over time. Freak & Donna – the web series about two nonbinary best friends battling judgement from their peers, egotistic magicians, capitalism, and corny bosses. This late in life coming of age story that started as an idea, bouldered into a vivid dream that we needed to see come alive.

On our journey of actualization, we developed our production company Sleepy Cloud Productions. When searching for talent for Freak & Donna, we met dozens of queer and trans actors, creators, makers, and visualizers to add to our cast and crew. We were able to provide jobs and contacts to LGBTQ+ folks, which felt especially important during a time when discrimination is on the rise and homo- and transphobia are growing nationally. We want to uplift and add to the voices that demand attention and love, and illuminate that there is real joy and compassion all around our community.

Freak & Donna the web series is just one project, but Sleepy Cloud Productions has many more in store and would love to work with other queer creators all over, and help them manifest their film dreams. We are open to collaboration on all projects, and want to see more LGBTQ+ content created and put out into the world. Sleepy Cloud Productions can help bridge the gap for people who have brilliant stories to tell, but don’t know where to begin or how to form a team. Amplifying LGBTQ+ voices, and telling stories that give us hope, joy, and laughter, is our mission and priority.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When we began the process of developing Freak & Donna in 2023, we knew we wanted to make it as professionally as possible. We acquired our team, put together a budget, and started crowdfunding. We put out our pilot in August 2023 and didn’t pick up filming for our second episode until February 2025. It took over two years for us to crowdfund only half of our goal, but July 2025 we were able to release our third episode and we have filmed a small amount from every episode.

In June 2025, just after the release of our second episode, we hit a slump. The second episode release was successful and we were able to fundraise enough to finish filming the third episode, but after our shoot we were out of resources. We weren’t fundraising fast enough to produce episodes quickly, our friends and family had been so generous we felt we had tapped them out, we couldn’t see our audience growing — was our work paying off? Was it all a delusion? Morale was low and we couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Then we heard about a queer vendor and club fair and started talking. Could we put ourselves out there? Sell merch we make, share the episode, get new fans through blood, sweat, and tears? The answer was of course an ear-piercing: yes we can! Through all of June, we set up pop-up booths and talked to people all over Brooklyn about Freak & Donna. We gathered new followers, raised more money, and revived our sense of purpose. We knew we could keep going if we tried. We just couldn’t give up.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

One of the things we appreciate the most through our entire process of creating, is when people not only sit and listen to us and give us feedback, but when people actually approach us to tell us what our work means to them. Knowing that people are genuinely interested, that our work is touching people, that you see what we see — these things matter so much to creators. Everything we do, we do for our community and when they are able to receive it and welcome it, we know we have done something good.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://freakanddonna.com
• Instagram: freakanddonna
• Youtube: freakanddonnatv

Image Credits

Kade Alpers – picture of Lexi and Emily
Eurica Yu – stills from Freak & Donna