Broad City star Abbi Jacobson is opening up about the way she safely travels with her wife, Jodi Balfour, through notoriously anti-LGBTQ states as a gay couple.
“As my wife and I drive, if we drive across the country, there are states where we are sisters. In case,” Jacobson, 42, told Page Six during a Tangles screening earlier this week.
“It’s really wild, how we’ve come so far in a lot of areas,” she added, while acknowledging that “many people” are not able to hide their sexuality in order to protect their physical safety and wellbeing.
Jacobson met Balfour, 39, virtually in 2020 during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, Balfour was navigating the loss of a sibling and a previous breakup. The pair went public with their romance in October 2021 and after keeping their relationship secret for a year. They later tied the knot at the Public Records in Brooklyn in 2024.
“After so much distance, we wanted the wedding to feel like that first sweaty shoulder moment — total togetherness,” Balfour told Cultured of the pair’s intimate wedding at the time. “I think we did that.”
“It was such kismet because the ceremony was not what we expected, but it was exactly what we’d hoped for,” Jacobson added of their ceremony. “People were packed together. When we looked out at the audience, our friends were on stools, peeking through the plants, and sitting on top of the booths. I’ve never been to a wedding like that.”
While legal and cultural strides have been made regarding the LGBTQ+ community in recent years — including the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling establishing the Constitutionally-protected right for same-sex couples to get married — hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people are on the rise.
According to data published by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FB), hate crimes targeting LGBTQ+ individuals have increased for the past four years in a row. In 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion in which he explicitly suggested the Court “reconsider” Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark case granting LGBTQ+ people the right to marry nationwide.
According to the ACLU’s bill tracker, over 500 anti-LGBTQ+ state bills have been considered across various U.S. state legislatures in 2026 alone — the majority targeting trans people and their legal right to access gender-affirming care or participate on sport teams that align with their gender identity.
“I do think that representation is a little bit on my mind,” Jacobson told The Independent in a 2022 interview discussing her decision to go public with her relationship. “Not to say that I’m posting a photo of us to be like, ‘We need people to know that there are queer people out there.’ I’m not doing that. But I am sort of! I don’t feel like there’s a ton of us in the industry.”
She continued at the time, “You just hope you can open up people’s minds and also get people who don’t feel seen to feel seen and empowered.”
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