Arts

Lil Nas X: Suicide Prevention Advocate of the Year

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Trevor Project Honors Lil Nas X

The Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning (LGBTQ) young people, honored Grammy Award-winning artist Lil Nas X with its inaugural Suicide Prevention Advocate of the Year Award. Lil Nas X has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to supporting The Trevor Project’s mission to end suicide among LGBTQ young people with his openness about struggling with his sexuality and suicidal ideation, his continued advocacy around mental health issues, and his unapologetic celebration of his queer identity.

The Trevor Project’s inaugural Suicide Prevention Advocate of the Year Award marks the start of National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and the crucial work that needs to be done to end suicide among LGBTQ youth. According to The Trevor Project’s National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, 42% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth. Due to higher rates of discrimination, rejection, and social isolation, LGBTQ young people are at increased risk for negative mental health outcomes such as anxiety, depression, seriously considering suicide, and more.

In accepting the award, Lil Nas X said: “Thank you so much to The Trevor Project for this award and for all they do for the LGBTQ community. Discrimination around sexuality and gender identity is still very real, and our community deserves to feel supported and totally free to be themselves. I often get messages from fans telling me about their struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, and it made me realize that this was something bigger than myself. If using my voice and expressing myself in my music can help even one kid out there who feels alone, then it was all worth it.”

Amidst a record-breaking year for anti-LGBTQ legislation and violence against the LGBTQ community, The Trevor Project is highlighting the importance of queer representation in the media, and the powerful message of visibility and hope it sends to LGBTQ young people.

“The Trevor Project is thrilled to honor Lil Nas X with the Suicide Prevention Advocate of the Year Award,” said Amit Paley, CEO and Executive Director at The Trevor Project. “His vulnerability in his journey to self acceptance and expression has created space for candid conversations around mental health and sexual identity, signaling to LGBTQ youth that they are not alone. The Trevor Project’s research shows that over 80% of LGBTQ youth say that LGBTQ celebrities positively influence how they feel about being LGBTQ, further affirming the cultural impact of Lil Nas X being proud of who he is and an ideal recipient of this inaugural award.”

Following his chart-topping, genre-defying debut “Old Town Road” in 2019, Lil Nas X quickly became a global LGBTQ icon recognized for his fearless effort in changing the status quo around what it means to be queer and Black in the mainstream music industry. Throughout his career, he has been an outspoken and unapologetic advocate for the LGBTQ community, using his platform to shed light on mental health issues many LGBTQ young people face. In February, Lil Nas X shared a series of intimate TikTok videos documenting his life story, including his silent battle with depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation during his rise to fame. The following month, he penned a heartfelt letter to his 14-year-old self about coming out publicly to mark the release of “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name).” In the letter he states, “I know we promised to die with the secret, but this will open doors for many other queer people to simply exist.” In May, he released the music video for his single “SUN GOES DOWN,” which depicts Lil Nas X uplifting a younger version of himself in high school when he was contemplating suicide and struggling to come to terms with his sexuality. Through his bold music videos, poignant song lyrics, and candor on social media, Lil Nas X continues to fight for mainstream queer representation and elevate important issues around mental health, igniting change and spotlighting the experiences of LGBTQ young people around the world.

If you or someone you know needs help or support, The Trevor Project’s trained crisis counselors are available 24/7 at 1-866-488-7386, via chat www.TheTrevorProject.org/Help, or by texting START to 678678.

About The Trevor Project

The Trevor Project is the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning (LGBTQ) young people. The Trevor Project offers a suite of 24/7 crisis intervention and suicide prevention programs, including TrevorLifeline, TrevorText, and TrevorChat as well as the world’s largest safe space social networking site for LGBTQ youth, TrevorSpace. Trevor also operates an education program with resources for youth-serving adults and organizations, an advocacy department fighting for pro-LGBTQ legislation and against anti-LGBTQ rhetoric/policy positions, and a research team to discover the most effective means to help young LGBTQ people in crisis and end suicide. If you or someone you know is feeling hopeless or suicidal, our trained crisis counselors are available 24/7 at 1-866-488-7386 via chat www.TheTrevorProject.org/Help, or by texting START to 678-678.

Meeting at Larry Kramer’s House as a Pandemic Began

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AIDS Activist Andy Humm

Positive Thoughts
40 Years Ago: Meeting at Larry Kramer’s House as a Pandemic Began
By Andy Humm

Something was killing us gay men in 1981 and no one knew what was causing it. That summer there was one alarming article about it in The New York Times on July 3 (“RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS”) based on a CDC report and two articles by out gay Dr. Larry Mass in the gay New York Native, including “CANCER IN THE GAY COMMUNITY.” While there were many gay groups in those days none of us stepped up to coordinate a community-wide response whether through a sense that health authorities would address it (ha!) as they did with Legionnaire’s Disease in 1976 or fear that a community that had just officially ditched the mental illness label in 1973 would now be linked with a deadly physical malady.

It took Larry Kramer, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (for Women in Love), to bring us together. These cases hit his friends in the Fire Island fast lane hard. I only knew him as the author of the secret-spilling novel Faggots that had been condemned in gay movement circles.

Larry had also written an op-ed piece in the Times after the assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978 praising gay political muscle in San Francisco and condemning his hometown: “We are not ready for our rights in New York. We have not earned them. We have not fought for them.” (“Fuck him,” I thought at the time as a spokesperson for the 50-group Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights that campaigned for our gay rights bill. We had the votes for it in Manhattan — a much larger place than San Francisco — in 1971 when the Gay Activists Alliance first conceived it. But Queens was then Archie Bunker territory. And Staten Island? Fuhgeddaboudit. Who is this guy who has never been to one of our meetings?)

But when Larry wanted to get things moving, he called everyone he knew — friend and foe — and many who he did not. So as one of the “gay leaders” he looked down on, I got invited to a packed gathering at his Washington Square apartment on August 11, 1981, to hear from the doctor quoted in the Times, Alvin Friedman-Kien. Larry wanted us to raise money for research since none was forthcoming from government.

If all you know about this was Larry’s dramatization of it in the HBO version of The Normal Heart you don’t know what happened. (It is not in his searing stage version.) On HBO, a doctor is explaining what she is seeing with gay patients and flippant gay men are shouting, “C’mon, honey. I have an orgy to get to.”

As Larry later wrote more about the devastation of AIDS, he was indeed vilified by some for being “anti-sex” for saying things like, “Just stop fucking!” But at that gathering 40 years ago we listened intently, respectfully, and full of dread as the soft-spoken Dr. Friedman-Kien described the devastation he was seeing in his practice and hearing from other physicians treating gay men. You could have heard a pin drop.

We did not know what was causing clusters of deadly pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and the disfiguring purple lesions of Kaposi’s Sarcoma, an otherwise slow-moving cancer mainly of older Mediterranean men. We knew the gay patients were immunosuppressed but not why. Recreational drug use? Multiple STIs from multiple partners? There was even speculation about a viral agent — a prospect too frightening to contemplate with its attendant threat of quarantine. But the conclusive identification of HIV as cause would not come until three years later. We needed research.

If memory serves, Larry passed the hat at that gathering. I recall going back to Dignity, the gay Catholic group I still belonged to, and reproducing Dr. Mass’s article for our 300 members. At the next board meeting we voted for a $1,000 donation to this research effort — a very large sum in those days in a community with very little tradition of philanthropy. Most gay people were afraid to write checks to gay causes lest it expose them in a deeply homophobic culture.

Larry himself reportedly went to Fire Island and stood on the dock with a tin can to collect money for the effort and netted a total of $60. He did organize his friends into forming the Gay Men’s Health Crisis — but that would not be incorporated until 1982 to provide services and education that the government was not. He wanted GMHC to be much more aggressive in its advocacy to the point that he got removed from the board — a turn of events well-portrayed in his play, The Normal Heart.

Why wasn’t our response quick and intense? Some of it was denial and fear. You can see that now in the early lack of response to the devastating COVID pandemic today. The reports out of Wuhan in the early winter of 2019-20 ought to have put a worldwide public health response into action immediately. But we dithered and wished it away instead. (I have a copy of the New Yorker magazine a month before the city was locked down and there is not one word about COVID.)

In 1981, this was hitting us when we were still “pre-teenage” as a movement. It had only been 12 years since the Stonewall Rebellion and while that had sparked an explosion in gay activism, we were still a relatively powerless, underfunded, and mostly volunteer movement. Most gay people were not out — they just hoped to be left alone. I wrote for the gay New York City News back then and it was months before the health crisis became a regular subject. We did step up the fight for gay rights because without civil rights how were we to get the system to respond to our health crisis?

The Times and other mainstream media ignored it. There was no national TV news feature on it until Joe Lovett’s piece on ABC’s 20/20 in 1983 — the same year Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz published “How to Have Sex in an Epidemic” based on the limited knowledge we had then and when GMHC was able to fill Madison Square Garden for a celebrity-studded circus benefit. Dr. Mass did keep writing about it for the Native but had an article (“The Most Important New Public Health Problem in the United States”) rejected by the Village Voice.

We did pass the city gay rights bill in 1986 and I went into AIDS education for youth at the Hetrick-Martin Institute. By 1987 though — impatient with the community’s response to “the plague” — Kramer gave the speech that led to the formation of ACT UP. Activism — fueled by desperate, dying people — got into high gear. But it would not be until 1995 that effective treatments were developed, by which time millions had died and millions more had been infected.

Politicians and human beings in general are loathe to admit they have a plague in their midst. That’s how they get out of control. The question about so many challenges we now face — from the pandemic to climate change — is when we are going to trade some short-term comfort for long-term survival. Those meetings need to be convened everywhere — from dinner tables to town halls to Congress.

Andy Humm, a gay activist since 1974, has been co-host with Ann Northrop of the weekly national GAY USA television show since 1985. This column is a project of TheBody, Plus, Positively Aware, POZ and Q Syndicate, the LGBTQ+ wire service. Visit their websites – http://thebody.com, http://hivplusmag.com, http://positivelyaware.com and http://poz.com – for the latest updates on HIV/AIDS.

Must Read Classics for the Bisexual Community and Allies

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Bisexual Books

Beautiful Mind:
A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics
Sylvia Nasar’s detailed biography of the man, his achievements, and his descent into mental illness is as affectionate towards its subject as it is probing into the often oddly parallel worlds of academia and mental hospitals, genius and madness.
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Getting Bi
Voices of Bisexuals Around the World
A collection of 220 personal essays from 185 bi+ authors from 42 countries edited by Robyn Ochs and Sarah Rowley.
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Elegy for Iris
A biography of noted literary critic, novelist, activist, bisexual, and wife Iris Murdoch.
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Bisexual and Gay Husbands
Their Stories, Their Words
This collection of real e-mails from an Internet mailing list offers an intimate look into the lives and thoughts of gay and bisexual men who are married to women. Men at all stages of the coming out process share their experiences, secrets, pain, and hope. Klein is a psychiatrist and editor of the Journal of Bisexuality.
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Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, and Visions
A collection of essays by bisexual activists.
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Hybrid
Bisexuals, Multiracials, and other Misfits Under American Law
Ruth Colker here argues that our bipolar classification system obscures a genuine understanding of the very nature of subordination. By rejecting conventional bipolar categories, we can broaden our understanding of sexuality, gender race, and disability.
Purchase Hybrid: Bisexuals, Multiracials, and Other Misfits Under American Law

The Bisexual Option
Bisexuals are often misunderstood and feel that they don’t belong as they are not truly accepted by straights or gays in most cases. To generalize, straights think we are gays in denial, while gays think we are gay but our ‘gaydar’ is off, so to speak. This book gives comfort to the bisexual who is looking for their identity and where they fit in the scheme of things.
Purchase The Bisexual Option: Second Edition

Blessed Bi Spirit
Bisexual People of Faith
A collection of essays on bisexual people of faith.
Blessed Bi Spirit: Bisexual People of Faith

Bisexual Spaces
A Geography of Sexuality and Gender
Where are all the bisexuals? This elusive subject is explored in provocative fashion by Clare Hemmings in Bisexual Spaces. In a society dominated by an either/or mentality, bisexuality often defies explanation.
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Bi Lives
Bisexual Women Tell Their Stories
Bi Lives contains 18 in-depth, revealing interviews with bisexual women. They include bisexual political organizers, such as Lani Ka’ahumanu; women who identified as lesbians; disabled women; nurse-midwives; visual and performance artists; and an HIV-positive woman.
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Udo Kier and Michael Urie on their queer cross-generational bond in ‘Swan Song’

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Arthouse icon Udo Kier and co-star Michael Urie on their moving, queer cross-generational bond in ‘Swan Song’

An Aging Queen Gets His Swan Song
By Chris Azzopardi

Swan Song is available on Amazon Prime

German character actor Udo Kier is on camera holding old prints of press photos from his previous films over his face like a Halloween mask. He jokes that if a journalist dare ask a terrible question that he considers daft, the photos, not Kier himself, will answer back. Luckily those prints never made their way back onto camera during our conversation, which also included his “Swan Song” co-star Michael Urie.

“Swan Song,” the new film from openly gay “Edge of Seventeen” director Todd Stephens (“Another Gay Movie,” “Another Gay Movie 2: Gays Gone Wild”), wouldn’t be the film it is without Kier’s brilliant performance at the heart of it. He’s a leading man for the first time, rightly earning him some of the biggest buzz of his 50-year career. But there’s no question the film’s bittersweet coda, a scene that serves as an elegiac tribute that Kier shares with Urie (“Ugly Betty”), is something special in its own right. Poignantly, it honors older generations of unapoletically queer elders who enriched the lives of younger LGBTQ+ populations, demonstrating that, without them, queer life now wouldn’t be the same. 

Though Kier, also openly gay, has appeared in more than 220 films over the span of five decades (among them: almost all of Lars von Trier’s films, as well as Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” and Gus Van Sant’s “My Own Private Idaho”), he’s never played a character as proudly gay as Pat Pitsenberger, a legendary Ohio hairstylist known as the “Liberace of Sandusky.” Women loved Mr. Pat, as he’s called, for making them look, and consequently feel, beautiful.

Now in his advanced years and living in a nursing home, retired from doing hair, he’s more than earned the right to be a bitter old queen. Mr. Pat survived the AIDS epidemic, lost friends, was at the forefront of gay liberation. In this new gay world, he’s an outsider all over again, his glory days behind him. But when one of his former clients dies and he’s asked to do her hair, he has an opportunity to reclaim the history that made him who he is.

Kier, speaking from Los Angeles, and Urie, at home in New York, recently chatted about shooting their powerful scene, what attracted them to the film and the legacies they hope to leave behind.

What made you agree to do this project?

Udo Kier: For me, I got the script and I liked it. I said, “I want to meet Todd, because I want to see if I can work with him.” If I wouldn’t have liked him, I wouldn’t have made the film. But I liked him.

He came to Palm Springs, and we talked about it. His script was very strong. And I wanted to shoot as chronologically as we could. I wanted to start in the retirement home, which we did. I stayed there a single day on my own with no camera, because I wanted to feel the bed, I wanted to see where everything was. And then we went into town.

For me, the importance (of) this film is the different generation — my generation — and going back (to Ohio), and people don’t recognize me anymore. You see, I’m from Germany, and in Germany … if two men lived together, and the neighbors were hearing some erotic noises, they could call the police and the people were arrested and put in jail. Now they’re holding hands at Applebee’s.

So I think it’s so, so wonderful (that) in (a) relatively short time, two men or two women can get married and adopt children. It’s amazing. It’s amazing that, after 50 years in the business working with genius directors like Lars von Trier and Gus Van Sant, the critics now write that it is my best film.

Michael Urie: It was Udo from the beginning. When I was offered the job, he was already on board. That was very exciting to me, ’cause I’ve been a longtime fan of both the filmmaker, Todd, and Udo. But it’s this quiet observation that we as queer people have when we’re younger. Most queer people do not grow up in households with other queer people, and so we look elsewhere to find ourselves to see what we could be.

Michael, your character Dustin acknowledges that Pat, even though they had never met, made it easier for him to be openly gay. Who are the queer people you never personally knew who paved the way for you to be openly gay?

Urie: I’m from Texas, and I grew up in a suburb of Dallas called Plano, Texas. I was in drama in high school, and I was reading great queer literature and (there was) theater: “Angels in America” and Terrence McNally plays. I was exposed to this stuff, and I was aware of it and titillated by it. But there was a guy in my high school who was tall, strapping, extremely well dressed, very attractive, and pretty obviously gay. When I picture him in my head, he’s 30, even though he was, of course, 17 at the time. I looked to him and his strength and his power and his beauty. He was, in many ways, my Mr. Pat. I still think back on him. I still think about how awesome he was.

As gay men, do either of you see parts of yourself reflected in Pat?

Kier: I think, first of all, Michael, you did amazing, good work. (Our) scene on the couch works so well because I don’t move one inch. If I would have had a conversation, that would have been not good. But just having the cigarettes with the ashes, and listening, listening, listening made it stronger than if I would have answered you.

I’m more like an actor who likes to underplay (the character). That’s why, also, I never rehearsed with Todd, because Todd is a director who likes to rehearse. I learned from Lars von Trier, (whose) favorite line is, “Don’t act.” I always think about, especially if you’re in a movie like “Swan Song,” when you have a strong story, a strong situation, which is funny at times, and sad at times, there’s no need to do acting numbers. A lot of actors, they’ll start with their back to the camera, by the chimney, and then they’ll turn around and they’ll talk to the floor, and finally they’ll come up to the camera. No, no, no, no.

Yesterday I saw 20 minutes (of “Swan Song”), and today I will see the whole film at Outfest, and it’s a strong film. I hope a lot of people will see it. I showed it before to a few friends. Not many. I don’t have many friends. But I showed it to a few friends, and they all said, “Oh, I cried and cried. And I laughed.” So that is good. If you’re able to tell a story where people laugh and cry, that’s good.

It’s amazing how many really young people liked the movie. You know, I was afraid that (they’d say), “There’s an old man.” But it’s not true. There were young, young people. And one girl, yesterday, said to Todd, “This is one of my favorite films ever.” And I said, “Wow. Maybe she only goes once a year to the cinema.”

I got choked up throughout the movie thinking a lot about my older self and what I might be like when I’m Pat’s age, how I might look back on my life. Do you feel like you share something in common with Pat when it comes to being gay and aging?

Kier: That’s why I accepted the role. Todd told me a lot about Pat and when I got there (to Sandusky) I talked to Pat’s friends and (they) told me how he was smoking and things like that. It’s definitely the generation, and we’re very lucky that in Sandusky, the main street became our set. So in that green suit, I went to have a glass of chardonnay, and they all know me. There was the secondhand store and across the street was the theater, so it became all real. It was not a film where you have trailers. No, no, no, no. It was a real film. It was all from my heart. It wasn’t calculated. I never in the whole film calculated a situation. When I come out and say, “I’m back!,” that was a copy of Liberace. Because when Liberace was performing in Las Vegas, he ran through the stage with all (his) rings and said, “You paid for them.”

Because this movie says a lot about the legacies we leave behind, how do both of you hope others will remember you?

Kier: Well, in my case, because Mike is so much younger, doing it for 50 years, being Andy Warhol’s Dracula, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, people will, I guess, remember me (for those roles). But, for me, it’s really amazing that Variety and all the critics write that (“Swan Song” is) my best film. I feel a little bit strange about that. Making so many films with great directors, like “My Own Private Idaho” with Gus, and now they write it’s my best film. I know why. You know why? Because I have the leading part, and you follow the character. If you have a guest part in a film, people say, “He’s very good. He’s a good villain, yeah, yeah, yeah.” But they cannot follow you through the story, from folding napkins to wearing wonderful shoes when he’s dead (laughs).

Urie: I guess I want my legacy to be: “He was part of cool things. And he was always himself.” I’ve been in a lot of queer movies and queer theater and —

Kier: Strange movies.

Urie: (Laughs.) I’ve been in a lot of strange movies. And there was a point when I was first on TV and I was playing a very flamboyant gay character and I was told, “Don’t do this again. Don’t do any more of these. Don’t get pigeonholed.” And I thought, “There’s so many different kinds of gay people.” And I do play gay parts all the time, and they are different. We have so many different ways of being LGBTQ, and there are so many stories to tell.

I’m so proud to be part of this one, which I saw with a group at the Rooftop Film Festival in Brooklyn (with) a group of predominantly heterosexual people who loved it. That is a really exciting thing, too, to be a part of a movie that you would maybe call a gay movie because the protagonist is gay and the central conflict has to do with his homosexuality, but this is a straight person’s gay movie. Straight people love it. I think that’s a testament to Udo and a performance at the center that can compel and delight and break your heart. It’s a piece of life, watching it. And working on it felt like walking into the movie.

As Udo said, we took over that town — or they took over that town, and I showed up. I showed up at a certain point in the shoot and I felt like I was walking into a movie — not onto a film set, but into a movie. There he was in his green suit, and we didn’t talk much before we started shooting. He wanted our first interaction to be our first interaction. I’m used to going on stage and making people laugh, and here I am in this movie, reacting to a person. This is a guy walking into my space, and it was actually very easy because he was bringing so much over to me.

Michael, what do you think this film says about aging, in particular regarding the queer demographic?

Urie: That’s very interesting because now the way queer people navigate the world — marriage, parenting — there is a more traditional society-based way of getting older. An older person gets taken care of (by) family and loved ones. But I think all of us as queer people, we’re not going to have a life that society deems as normal. That is one of the things that we fear: that we will grow old alone or have no one to take care of us. Certainly it’s a fear that I have and I think about.

But what’s so beautiful about Mr. Pat and the way in which I relate to Mr. Pat is that, even though now it’s 2021 and queer people are accepted — I can walk down the street holding hands with my partner and I don’t feel any shame anymore or any danger, and I actually feel proud to do that; we’re legal, we’re allowed to marry, we’re allowed to have kids, we have full protections under the law, for the most part, I can blend in, I can assimilate — I don’t want to.

I think that is something that the older generation, when marriage equality became a thing and when people started getting married, thought, “Why would we need that? We’ve been fine without that. We don’t wanna be like straight people; we don’t wanna get married.” It’s two different things. It’s the right to be married, versus the need to be married. Also, I’m proud of who I am, and I’m proud to be different, and I don’t need to assimilate. I can be someone else. I think that I want to always have a little bit of Mr. Pat. I don’t wanna walk down the street and have people think, “That’s a straight person.”

Kier: (Laughs.) You have to get a green suit! Get a green suit and just smoke like (him).

Yesterday I looked up, because I hear (it) now so many times, the word “queer.” I wanted to look in the dictionary (to see) what it means. And queer means, actually, strange. If you go on the dictionary, it says queer means strange. Um, (I) definitely did a strange performance. (Laughs.)

So you might call your performance queer?

Kier: Not me. It’s just a performance. It’s not my swan song. I have made already four films after that. And so it’s not my swan song. That was the danger of it: I thought, “Oh my god, ‘Swan Song.’ I’m 77 years old soon, so is that maybe my last movie?” No, no, no. I had to go to Lars von Trier and quickly make a movie. And that’ll be my swan song.

Swan Song is available on Amazon Prime

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity

‘Love, Victor’ stars Michael Cimino and George Sear on bringing gay sex to their YA series

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Love Victor

Normalizing Queerness, One Gay Kiss at a Time
‘Love, Victor’ stars Michael Cimino and George Sear on bringing gay sex to their YA series and impacting LGBTQ+ youth

By Chris Azzopardi

“Love, Victor,” now in its second season, refuses to navigate coming out as simply a one-note experience.

The gay teen-romance, a series spinoff of the groundbreaking “Love, Simon” feature film, launched its debut season last year on Hulu. The first season was created for Disney+, but the company declined to air it after filming was complete. The show, Disney execs decided, was too grown-up for its young audience. Season 2, then, was created with Hulu audiences in mind, which means more mature emotional themes and a good amount of gay nooky — in fact, an entire episode is devoted to the show’s romantic leads, Victor (Michael Cimino) and Benji (George Sear), having sex.

This season, the series follows Victor as a newly out high schooler, from all sorts of Benji-Victor (“Venji,” as they’ve been collectively coined) romantic side plots –– meeting the parents, learning about gay sex — to how homophobia, when complicated by deep-rooted cultural and religious beliefs, has to be unlearned.

Before you read any further, know that this interview with Cimino and Sear, who talk about all that making out (and why they opted out of an intimacy coach for those sex scenes), includes some spoilers.

You guys owe me a few boxes of tissues for all the crying I did last night binging this season.

George Sear: Yeah, it’s an emotional one.

Michael Cimino: It’s a roller coaster, for sure.

Sear: I, myself, was tearing up yesterday because I watched the first three episodes, and particularly the scenes with the parents.

I also just have to start by saying that if I saw two boys making out as much as you two do in this season of “Love, Victor” when I was 16 years old, I would have made out with a lot more guys. Like, where were you in 1995?

Cimino: I was still, um, not even a thought! I wasn’t even a thought in either of my parents’ heads. But no, I think we’re moving in the right direction. I don’t think we’re in a very different time, but I think that we’re moving in the right direction (with) shows like this, where young LGBT youth can watch it and be like, “Oh, this is normal. This is OK.”

I feel like a lot of straight teens are like, “Oh yeah, I can make out with this person or this person, and it’s completely fine.” But it should be exactly the same for the LGBT community. They should feel no pressure and (it) should be completely normal to just kiss people in public.

Or have sex with your boyfriend and have your mom or dad catch you, because that also happens with gay people.

Cimino: Yes — yes, it does. It totally does. And I think that, obviously, right now, we’re definitely talking about… this show is definitely (about) queer Latinos and I love that about it. I think that it’s kind of exactly like every other straight teen show but except through a queer lens. I love that part about “Love, Victor.”

Sear: It does show the difficult realities of coming out in today’s age, which is a difficult thing for most people, but also just the joy in celebrating who you are and embracing who you are on the other side of that. And living your truth.

I think gay sex has been really neglected on television and I was pleased to see the second season of “Love, Victor” really go there with the sex. What did you appreciate about the way that this season tackled sex, George?

Sear: I think just having LGBTQ writers bring their stories and their experiences into the script brings this authenticity and realness to the stories. So the writing is all there. You know, as an actor to be able to play this part and then have such great quality writing is really kind of everything. What about you, Mike?

Cimino: Honestly, the whole representation of Victor’s sexual awakening and his sex life with Benji definitely relies a lot on George and I’s chemistry. I think that George is — sorry to give you your flowers on here — so easy to work with and so incredibly understanding and so willing to just do things and try different things (to) see what works and what doesn’t.

Sear: Yeah, it felt very explorative on set, didn’t it?

Cimino: Yeah, for sure.

Sear: They did say, “Do you want an intimacy coach?” and we felt, to be honest, both really dedicated to these characters and wanted to honor this writing and we just sort of felt like we had a closeness and were able to do that on set.

Cimino: We actually completely opted out of having an intimacy coach. George and I both felt like we were very comfortable with each other already. We really just went for it, and I think that that kind of reads on screen, where it felt very explorative. It felt very new and exciting, and I think that’s something that’s really, really cool.

I don’t know how you guys identify, but there’s this conversation about straight people playing queer roles and if you are straight, you know what, you did your job. You were so believable in these parts. I really felt this relationship was a real relationship.

Cimino: Thank you.

Sear: Thank you for saying that.

Cimino: That means a lot to hear because that is obviously a topic for discussion, and I’m glad it’s a conversation we’re having. I think conversations such as those should be had, but I think, realistically, it relies purely on an actor-to-actor basis. I feel like there are actors that are taking LGBT roles and not representing the community in an accurate way. They’re taking it as a cash grab and then they don’t represent the community afterwards, where it’s like you’re not advocating for the community. They’re not donating money to LGBT charities, they’re not trying to do things that will help the LGBT community, but they’re just taking the role because it’s a cash grab or, “Oh, it seems like it will make a difference in my career.”

What has it been like for both of you to bring this Venji romance to life on screen?

Sear: It’s an ever-ongoing journey, particularly the difference between Season 1 and Season 2. Being on Hulu this time around, being able to tell more realistic stories, it’s been great to be able to continue playing these characters and exploring their journeys collectively and individually and just exploring it in other areas, really, that we maybe weren’t able to do in Season 1 (on Disney+). So, it’s been great, and I hope we get the chance to get back to it.

Cimino: Definitely.

You have to do it again. You cannot leave me like you left me at the end of this season.

Sear: No, no. We’ll manifest it.

Cimino: Yes. For sure, for sure. We’ve got to manifest it.

Michael, are you Team Venji or Team Vahim?

Cimino: Oh, man. I feel like… I don’t know. I haven’t been able to watch the show in its entirety, so I can’t really say. I’m so torn.

Sear: Yeah. He doesn’t want to let you down on this interview, that’s what he’s saying.

Cimino: I feel so torn.

Sear: No, I think ultimately you probably just want Victor to be happy.

Cimino: Yes, exactly. We just want Victor to be happy.

That’s a pretty good non-answer.

Sear: That’s a very good deflective answer, isn’t it?

Cimino: I’m just… I’m confused, OK!

My opinion on the third season is that you three just form a throuple.

Sear: Hey, we’ll pitch it.

Cimino: (Laughs.) Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll pitch it. We’ll put you in the “special thanks.”

Because the show has had an immense impact on LGBTQ+ youth — I mean, it would have changed my life, like I told you, when I was 16 — what’s one letter you’ve received from a queer fan that really made you feel like what you were doing here was really affecting lives?

Sear: Off the bat, one that sticks out to me — because there have been many — (was a) message from someone who’s in the military. I don’t think they had a very good experience with their sexuality, obviously, with the way things are in the military. And they said watching the show really just made them feel some sort of acceptance, and heard.

Cimino: I’ve gotten so many messages, but some of the ones that stick out to me the most are (from) people that are literally Latino and they’re like, “This is my exact story and this is exactly what I’ve been going through with my mom, or my dad, or my uncle.” It’s crazy to know that we’re still not in that place where people can just accept their children or their family for just being true to who they are as people. I think that it’s really inspiring for me as an artist to continue to push myself harder and to continue to represent the community in an accurate way because I get to see the impact it’s making on people’s lives.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Chris Azzopardi is the Editorial Director of Pride Source Media Group and Q Syndicate, the national LGBTQ wire service. He has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Cher, Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, GQ and Billboard. Reach him via Twitter @chrisazzopardi.

A Day in the Queer Life of Asian Pacific America

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A Day in the Queer Life of Asian Pacific America

A digital exhibition “A Day in the Queer Life of Asian Pacific America” is now available at smithsonianapa.org. The exhibition, which will be updated with new material through August, is a collaboration of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, AARP and Kundiman.

The past 50 years have witnessed huge strides in visibility for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities, but with little attention focused on Asian American and Pacific Islander experiences. Featuring solicited and crowd-sourced media, including short film, photography, boomerangs, video poems and a long-form essays, this virtual exhibition explores queer life in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities throughout the country.

Featured sections of the exhibition include:

  • Queer Elders: a series of four video shorts of queer elders in San Francisco, Los Angeles and sites in the South and Midwest U.S., curated by archivist, photographer and filmmaker Mia Nakano
  • Queer Check-ins: a series of 12 video poem “check ins” by queer diasporic poets throughout the U.S. and beyond, curated by poet Franny Choi
  • Queer Youth: crowd-sourced photography and short video by queer youth
  • Queer Motion: crowd-sourced boomerangs exploring queer survival, heartbreak and joy set to motion
  • Queer Time: a long-form essay on queer experience of time by poet Rajiv Mohabir

“As an extension of our 2014 digital exhibition ‘A Day in the Life of Asian Pacific America,’ this project examines everyday life all across Asian Pacific America in order to illuminate the vast and complex nature of the Asian Pacific American identity,” said Lisa Sasaki, the director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. “Most importantly, it brings much-needed visibility to the Asian American and Pacific Islander LGBTQ community by sharing the stories of elders, youth and—through calls for crowd-sourced material—any community member.”

“A Day in the Queer Life of Asian Pacific America” uses the designation “queer” to understand sexual and gender identity as often fluid and complex, while recognizing the term’s histories of derogatory usage.

“The 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall uprising feels like a good time to take stock of how far we’ve come and how far we must go to ensure that all LGBT older adults are free to be their whole selves, in every community under the rainbow, without fear of any kind of discrimination,” said Nii-Quartelai Quartey, AARP senior advisor and national LGBT liaison. “AARP is proud to do our part to advance and maintain the dignity of all of our members.”

Todrick Hall: Pushing for Black ‘Femuline’ Acceptance

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Todrick Hall

Todrick Hall talks reinvention, industry bias and what drives his advocacy
By Eve Kucharski

Todrick Hall is serving bitch but making it, as he says on his latest record, fashòn. The album’s title, “Femuline,” is exactly as it seems: the blending of feminine and masculine attributes to create a greater, queerer whole. That theme serves as the perfect narrative for an artist who has made a music career out of reimagining classic stories like “The Wizard of Oz” and “Cinderella” through his own creative lens. The difference this time, he says, was that there was no “pre-existing blueprint.”

“It may exist, but I’ve never heard a song talking about how you can be both: you can be a prince, you can be a princess; you can be the bride, you can be the groom. And that was very interesting for me to explore,” Hall says. “But it was uncharted territory as far as I know.”

Full of club-ready bangers that seem tailor-made for Pride season, “Femuline” is Hall’s “open love letter to the LGBTQ community,” he says. An already queer experience is made queerer thanks to both LGBTQ+ and allied icons like Brandy, Tyra Banks, TS Madison, Chaka Khan, and, of course, Hall’s signature Broadway vocals.

So far in his career, Hall has been part of multiple Broadway smash hits, secured a spot as a recurring guest judge on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and amassed a whopping 44 million views on YouTube with his 2019 “Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels” breakthrough single. Considering Hall only made the move to Los Angeles a decade ago, it’s all the more impressive that his hard-won successes have been so consistent and plentiful. Not even the vision board that he created upon his permanent move out West could’ve prepared the Plainview, Texas, native for everything he has accomplished at this point in his career.
“It wouldn’t have included any of these things because I wouldn’t have had the courage and the wisdom and the diversity and the acceptance and the permission from society to be able to put things on there,” Hall says. “As a dreamer, I still even limited my dreams at that time.”

He says that shortly after breaking into the industry he realized that, because of societal stigma and bias, his identity as a Black gay man would only make achieving his goals more difficult than he imagined. Hall recalls a distinct moment on the Broadway stage when another Black performer in “The Color Purple” pulled him aside and told him that he was never going to get away with mediocrity.

“And in every Broadway show that I’ve ever been in, I had to tumble,” he says. “I had to be doing backflips and leaping across the stage, and riffing and singing high, and understudying 8 billion roles while I saw my counterparts that were a different race come in and give, in some cases not even a mediocre performance, but the skill set that was required for them [to succeed] was lower,” Hall says.

In some ways, Hall says he views the high standards society places on him as a compliment, as an expectation to only bring the best quality to his work. Yet he recognizes their deeply problematic nature, racist origins and the consequences those standards have on both himself and fellow Black performers.

“You expect Black women to get up and out-sing everyone on the stage. If she doesn’t sing ‘And I Am Telling You’ or ‘I Will Always Love You,’ then why is she there?” he says. “To me, I think a Black woman should be able to get up and sing ‘Part of Your World’ from ‘The Little Mermaid.’ The reality is that there are a lot of people who are musical-theater performers that, if they can’t deliver a gospel Jennifer Holliday-, Jennifer Hudson-, Beyoncé-esque performance, their opportunities to perform and exist in entertainment are almost nonexistent.”

To Hall, one of the keys to dispelling the stigma that still persists around identity, whether conscious or not, is to push for representation whenever possible – not only of Black entertainers but those who are LGBTQ+ as well.

“Some days I wake up and I’m like, ‘You should be grateful for the things that you have.’ But then there are other days where I’m like, ‘You can count on one hand, without using most of your fingers, the amount of gay men who have come out and been gay when they were popular on the radio,’” he says, lamenting that he’s never heard a man sing a love song to another man on mainstream radio.

He adds that Hollywood’s acceptance of Black queer artists in 2021 isn’t enough: “We’re accepting breadcrumbs when we should get a slice of bread at this point.”
Hall believes that it should be a requirement and not an exception for radio stations to play same-sex love songs as a means of normalizing ideas of LGBTQ+ acceptance. Really, though, he’s out of patience for people who use a handful of examples of Black representation in popular culture as an excuse to say that visibility is equitable.
“People can make the decision to be like, ‘Yeah, there wasn’t a lot.’ Or they can bring up the fact that Oprah existed and be like, ‘That’s enough,’ when that wasn’t enough,” Hall says.

That extends to LGBTQ+ artists, too. He points to Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” as an example of audacious content created by a talented Black gay artist who’s seeking to break free from societal expectations of what Black queerness should look like.

“He probably knows singing a song that’s just a format that the Jonas Brothers, that Shawn Mendes, that James Arthur, that Ed Sheeran, that Sam Smith have been able to do would not be enough,” he says.

His passion about this topic and advocating for representation in his work comes from a personal place. A place, he says, that was born of being told “no” because of his Black, queer identity. It’s those roots that inspired him to take on advocacy projects outside of music like being the face of Morphe’s “Live With Love” palette whose full proceeds will go to benefit The Trevor Project. But as vocal as he is about causes he cares about, Hall doesn’t feel every artist needs to be required to use their platform for advocacy — it’s just the “cherry on top” if they do.

Looking ahead, it won’t be until 2022 that fans will get to see Hall perform “Femuline” live, seeing as how COVID-19 has thrown things off-kilter for nearly every touring artist’s schedule. But until then, there’s no question about what he needs to do next: “knock down walls and barriers so that the people that come after me are able to just strut without having to stress out [about] the things that I had to worry about that made me believe that I could never accomplish my dreams.”

On the New ‘L Word,’ Everybody’s Invited to the Party

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L Word Generation Q

Series vets Hailey, Moennig and Beals talk shining a light on a new LGBTQ+ generation with ‘Generation Q’
By Chris Azzopardi

Watch The L Word: Generation Q Now on Amazon Primel

What did the first run of “The L Word” get wrong? It’s a question that was posed to veteran stars Jennifer Beals, Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig on Zoom one recent afternoon.

“Haircuts!” Hailey, 50, exclaims. “First season outfits, sunglasses,” adds Moennig, 43.
Of course Hailey can’t deny it: “There were some bad sunglasses,” she emphasizes.
But the actresses who helped revolutionize queer characters on TV with “The L Word” when the show first aired on Showtime from 2004 to 2009 are also fully aware that the shades, the cuts and the outfits aren’t the only thing that hasn’t aged particularly well.

The series, for as groundbreaking as it was then, has been criticized for missing the mark on trans representation. It’s hard to ignore that fact retroactively in the years following the show, as trans issues are finally at the forefront of our cultural and political landscape.
“We were where we were when we were there,” Hailey says, noting this is a common response of hers when asked about the passé parts of the show’s initial run, something she seems to be asked about often.

“It’s so easy to be the Monday morning quarterback at this point. The show is dated stylistically, but thematically I think it still holds up.”

Moennig isn’t reticent about holding the show accountable for “storylines that are considered problematic now.” “There’s no denying that,” she says. “But at that time, no one was there to hurt anyone’s feelings or disparage anyone. That’s what we knew then.”

As the tide keeps turning for LGBTQ+ progress in this country, so does content that reflects those shifts. Between the original series and the 10 years that passed before the reboot premiered on Showtime in 2019, Hailey, Moennig and Beals saw an opportunity: to feature a young, diverse cast of LGBTQ+ characters who could reflect contemporary queer life, along with delving into modern love dynamics like polyamory.

Though the three actresses aren’t writing the episodes, they’re still doing their due diligence. “We need to make sure that our show is relevant,” says Hailey, who adds that during the decade the show was off the air “the world was changing before our eyes.”
She says they felt not only a “responsibility to bring these characters back to show how they’re living in today’s world, but also: ‘Let’s bring on some new characters to represent people in the community.’”

Seeing as though they’ve “completely changed language,” Beals, 57, was thrilled to spotlight a new LGBTQ+ generation. “They’ve added words to the dictionary — non-binary used to be just a mathematical term,” she says. “We look at language in a different way (because) of this generation who refused to be anything other than self-identified. So to be able to bring the show back on and explore those stories is really important and exciting to me.”

At the onset of “Generation Q,” Beals, who plays Bette, expressed what subject matter she wanted to see represented in the series. One of those issues was race, especially colorism, in the LGBTQ+ community. Aging, which was also on her mind, was a topic she brought to the writers’ room. Her suggestion led to an exploration of Bette’s menopausal experiences in Season 1 of “Generation Q.”

“For me, the show in itself is doing a lot of that work when it comes to personally my character,” Hailey says. “I want to go into personal stories and I feel like through that kind of representation, just being a gay woman and showing what we go through, is doing that work. It’s not always about getting on the soapbox — it’s about the subtleties of what we do.”

Moennig’s on the same page. She feels the show, by its very queer nature, is innately political, and always on her mind while filming is: “How do I make this as honest as possible?”

“It’s the little things that actually seem to provide a lot of impact,” she adds.
Moennig recognizes that, from the beginning, the show was always meant to be a “celebration, not a woe-is-me fest.”

It still is, she says.

Beals wholeheartedly agrees: “It’s primarily centered in joy and the smaller moments, and I think in that way it’s been really forward-moving.”

In Season 1, Alice (Hailey) navigates a throuple, Shane (Moennig) opens a queer bar, and Bette (Beals) is co-parenting Angie (Jordan Hull) with ex Tina (Laurel Holloman). Season 2 finds Bette more deeply exploring her mother-daughter relationship with Angie, while Alice writes a book that brings buried personal issues to the surface, things she hasn’t quite figured out yet — “a lot of stuff you would think she might’ve at her age,” Hailey says, laughing. And what’s going on with Shane? Moennig says to expect “a very, very slow burn where you’re going to have to watch a good majority of the season to get any kind of answer.”

As for bringing their Alice, Bette and Shane together with the cast of the upcoming “Queer as Folk” reboot — well, it’s not an impossible idea. “That would be amazing!” Beals says. “Boy, would that be cool,” Hailey adds. “That’d be fun.”

And Beals, enthused by these two queer universes colliding, knows just the person to unite these iconic casts: “I know Alice is going to host a party and everybody’s going to be there.”

Watch The L Word: Generation Q Now on Amazon Primel

Upstairs Inferno: The Deadly 1973 Gay Bar Arson

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Upstairs Inferno

Watch Upstairs Inferno now on Amazon Prime

On June 24, 1973, an arsonist set fire to the Up Stairs Lounge, a gay bar located on the edge of the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana. The fire ultimately killed 32 people and severely injured countless others. Some bodies were never identified. One-third of the New Orleans chapter of the Metropolitan Community Church were killed in the blaze, including two clergy. The primary suspect was never charged with the crime. The tragedy did not stop at the loss of lives. There were also the delayed injuries: lost jobs, fear, public ridicule and severed families. The devastation was compounded by the homophobic reactions and utter lack of concern by the general public, government and religious leaders. The fire permanently altered lives and was the root of many lifelong struggles. Despite the staggering historical significance, few people know about the tragedy.

With unique access (on-camera interviews from survivors, witnesses and friends/families of victims) and a fresh perspective (incorporating long lost artifacts, newsreel footage and photographs that haven’t been seen in decades), Upstairs Inferno vividly examines this oft-forgotten story and is considered the most authoratative film about the tragedy and its aftermath.

Narrated by New Orleans own New York Times best-selling author Christopher Rice, Upstairs Inferno (96 min) is a mesmerizing mix of crime drama and human connections that captures the heartbreaking feelings of unconditional love and overwhelming loss. An unsettling snapshot of what was, until the early hours of June 12, 2016, the deadliest single event to affect the gay community in American history, Upstairs Inferno gets inside the hearts and minds of a handful of vibrant people who experienced one of the most important and underreported moments in LGBT History.

“While Upstairs Inferno recounts a historic event that occurred in the U.S., its underlying message crosses cultural boundaries”, Director Robert L. Camina emphasizes. “It’s easier for people to hate and fear things they don’t understand. No matter your background or how you identify, in the end, we are more alike than we are different. I think Upstairs Inferno reminds of us that.”

“We made the film hoping audiences would walk away from it with a renewed call for compassion: Compassion for those unlike us. Compassion for those who are hurting. Compassion for those in need. Because there definitely wasn’t a lot of compassion when the deadly arson occurred.”

“Sadly, a lot has happened in the world since the film premiered and we began spreading the message of compassion and the impact of hate”, Camina continues. “It sickens me that mass murders have become so common. I think Upstair Inferno’s message is as timely as ever: the power of family, friends and forgiveness in the shadow of immense pain. Hopefully, by the Up Stairs Lounge Arson survivors sharing their stories, it can provide strength to others in need.”

“Over five years ago, when I decided to tell this long overdue story, I didn’t want to make a film that was simply a stagnant exposition of facts. I wanted to humanize the story and put faces on the tragedy. I wanted to honor the victims and all those impacted by the tragedy, giving them the respect and dignity they were denied so many years ago”, Camina continues.

“As we observe the 45th Anniversary of the deadly arson, I’m grateful that Upstairs Inferno is now accessible to audiences around the world via streaming platforms, because the victims, their loved ones and their stories should never be forgotten again.”

Watch Upstairs Inferno now on Amazon Prime

CHRISTOPHER RICE (Narrator) Famed New Orleanian and New York Times best selling author provides UPSTAIRS INFERNO with a thought provoking, pitch perfect narration, sensitively complimenting the film’s emotionally raw interviews. He is the head writer and an executive producer of THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES, a television show based on the bestselling novels by his mother, Anne Rice. Together they penned RAMSES THE DAMNED: THE PASSION OF CLEOPATRA, a sequel to her bestselling novel THE MUMMY OR RAMSES THE DAMNED. His most recent novel, BONE MUSIC, was released in early 2018. Much of his writing is heavily influenced by the years he and his Mom lived in New Orleans. Rice considers New Orleans his hometown.

ROBERT L. CAMINA (Writer/Director/Producer) wrote, directed and produced several short films before premiering his first full length documentary, RAID OF THE RAINBOW LOUNGE (2012) to sold out audiences, rave reviews and a media frenzy. RAID OF THE RAINBOW LOUNGE recounts the widely publicized and controversial June 28, 2009 police raid of a Fort Worth, Texas gay bar that resulted in multiple arrests and serious injuries. The raid occurred on the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Inn raid. The film, narrated by TV icon Meredith Baxter, screened during 33 mainstream and LGBT film festivals across the world. The film won 11 awards including 8 BEST Film Awards. The film also received attention from the Office of the White House, Department of Justice and a division of the U.S. State Department. In 2015, Camina premiered his second full length documentary, UPSTAIRS INFERNO. Camina is honored that BOTH documentaries received invitations to screen at the Library of Congress. Camina also takes pride in being a public speaker, concentrating on LGBT history and LGBT rights.

Watch Upstairs Inferno now on Amazon Prime

Leyna Bloom: In Full Bloom

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Leyna Bloom

In Full Bloom
This Trans Actress and Sports Illustrated Model Is Changing the Game for Trans Women of Color
By Chris Azzopardi

Leyna Bloom made a splash this year for being the first Black and Asian openly trans woman to be featured in the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, out in July. But even before reaching that historical milestone, the 27-year-old Chicago native was changing the game both on the runway and on the screen.

In 2019, Bloom was the only transgender woman of color to walk Paris Fashion Week in 2019 at the Tommy Hilfiger x Zendaya fashion show as part of an all-Black female runway. Then there’s her drama “Port Authority,” which features Bloom making her major movie debut in a prominent role, positioning the model, actress and activist as the first trans woman of color to lead a feature film at the Cannes Film Festival in the festival’s 72-year history. After first premiering at Cannes in 2019, “Port Authority” will expand to VOD on June 1.

In writer-director Danielle Lessovitz’s romantic drama, which was executive produced by Martin Scorsese, Bloom plays Wye, a trans woman of color and “femme queen” who encounters Paul (Fionn Whitehead) after he’s kicked out of his home in central Pennsylvania. Set against the backdrop of New York’s vogue houses and kiki ballrooms is their blossoming love. Bloom’s next film, “Asking For It,” a film focused on sexism that stars Kiersey Clemons, Ezra Miller, Vanessa Hudgens and Gabourey Sidibe, will premiere this summer at the Tribeca Film Festival. The actress can also be seen as ballroom figure Pretentia Khan in the third and (allegedly) final season of Ryan Murphy’s “Pose.”

During our recent conversation, the rising trans vanguard got emotional reflecting on making Cannes Film Festival history with “Port Authority.” Bloom also talked about drawing on legendary house mother Carmen Xtravaganza for her role on “Pose,” her dashed dreams of being in the Navy like her father, and being celebrated for her groundbreaking Sports Illustrated shoot.

When were you first interested in acting and modeling?

My great-grandmother was a model. My grandmother and my auntie, her daughters were both models. And my auntie was a dancer; she danced for Sammy Davis Jr. So dance and performing have always been in my blood. I come from two backgrounds, Nigerian and Filipino, which has a very rich background full of dance. So my ancestry and my creativity is all inside my body asking to be released constantly.

Acting has kind of always been kind of part of the plan, just like, “When am I gonna get there, and what script and what project will be the best project for that opportunity?” When “Port Authority” arrived, it was right on time because it was just a dream opportunity to play that character because it is literally the voice and the story of so many trans bodies. So, I’m glad that that was the first opportunity given to me to show the world the future.

“Port Authority” is the first film in Cannes Film Festival’s 72-year history to feature a trans woman of color in a lead role. How do you feel knowing that?

To be able to do something like this, which is my ancestors’ wildest dreams, is truly monumental. Why has it taken so long? And what can we do with this moment to make sure that it doesn’t take that long for the next person? That’s where my mind is always going to be wrapped up in. Because I may be the first, but I will not be the last. I think it’s just powerful because just 72 years ago, Black and brown bodies and queer bodies were nonexistent in this space. I think it’s just… I don’t know. I’m getting so emotional thinking about this.

Who are some of the people who paved the way for you to feel comfortable to be who you are?

A lot of beautiful women. Carmen Xtravaganza. Halle Berry. Tyra Banks. Tracey “Africa” (Norman). You know, Tyra Banks was the first woman of color to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated, so I’m standing on her shoulders. It’s very powerful and I’m so happy that (“Port Authority,” a story about) love was the first reason why we made history. It wasn’t about war, it wasn’t about pain. It was about love. It was a love story that made history about two people, (featuring a) trans woman, that has been missing in society. That is why it is so important, and that is why we need to continue having more moments like this.

How much of your own ballroom experience is the experience of your character, Wye, in “Port Authority”?

My experience is very similar. Wye’s character comes from a ballroom family where she is getting ready for balls and she is helping her family get ready for balls. Paul’s character is actually helping her get ready for balls, so that is very familiar to my lifestyle over the years. I’ve been (doing) ballroom since I was 15 years old, so I’ve gotten ready for many balls and prepared myself for many different competitions through the circuit. It’s very real, it’s very raw, and I love that Danielle wanted to just bring that authenticity to the film.

I chuckled at the line, “I mean, you could be a model or something,” which Paul says to Wye after she tells him that she was in the Navy. Was that based on your own real-life experience?

My dad was actually in the military. He was a Marine. I was raised in that environment, I was raised around my dad and us living on base, and us traveling to many different bases around the world, and officially being a Marine brat. That was something that we wanted to add to the character. I also wanted to be in the Navy at one point in my life, but because I am trans and because the system is not set up for me to serve my country, I could not do that. So I thought that was a beautiful little piece of nuance.

How did ballroom culture shape who you are today?

Ballroom just allowed me to see myself in my rawest state and understand that if I wanted to change, it’s up to me; it’s not up to anyone else. Ballroom is a place where you can find harmony in yourself, in your community. Where you can feel the vibrations of the people that are feeling the pain that you’re feeling and can heal together because of that. So ballroom holds lots of raw energy and power that the world has been exploring at a very small rate. But now ballroom is going to homes around the world, and people are redefining the ideas about themselves and what’s around them.

As for “Pose,” were you a fan of the series before you starred in it?

I actually auditioned for “Pose,” and a lot of my friends on the show auditioned and got the part. I was a huge fan of any project that was about Black and brown trans women being the centerpiece of the glory of television. So, I’m a huge fan of that show, and I’m so happy I got a chance to be a part of (this) last season.

How would you describe your character, Pretentia, and what was it like embodying her?

I have so many ideas about her character. Pretentia is kind of like Carmen Xtravaganza, this amazing ballroom icon woman that is Spanish and Black African, and she just inspired me growing up. I wanted to just really bring Carmen back to life through Pretentia. She’s just a combination of a lot of different strong women that I just grew up loving. She reminds me a lot of Sharon Stone. She had a lot of really strong alpha characters, and I wanted to bring that to Pretentia.

Tyra Banks has been such a huge supporter of yours. How important is it to have prominent cis people, like Tyra Banks, lift up the trans community? And what does it mean for you to have people like Tyra in your corner?

Honestly, it’s full circle for me. I was that kid that was watching “America’s Next Top Model” first season, jotting notes to use in my everyday life. Tyra was this woman that was giving us access to free information about her lived experience. And, to one day be aligned in some way, shape or form — aligned to what she has created — is truly powerful. And for her to acknowledge that is even more powerful.

I grew up reading Sports Illustrated, and knowing that Tyra was on the cover many times was truly powerful for me as a young trans woman. Seeing a beautiful Black woman that was full bust — big smile, beautiful personality, in tune with her femininity — was really powerful for me to see. When I did Sports Illustrated and it was announced, I immediately hit her up to acknowledge her as like, “I would not be here if it wasn’t for you,” like I did when I did “Pose.” I hit up those women that I told you (about): Carmen, Tracey “Africa.” I hit up these women to acknowledge that, “I’m doing this because you allowed me to see something that changed my life, that now I can be a part of, and I would not be able to do it if it wasn’t for you.” And (Tyra) acknowledged me. We’re texting here and there, and she’s sending me words of affirmation, and I’m moving to Paris soon. She’s like, “Oh, that’s where I was at; my career started in Paris.” So she’s a huge inspiration of mine, but she’s also a mentor, and you know, like a mommy also. I’m one of her babies. (Laughs.)

Who else reached out to you acknowledging how big of a deal your Sports Illustrated shoot was?

So many people hit me up. People from all different walks of life. A lot of white men reached out to me, and not fetishizing or sexualizing me but acknowledging the fact that the world is changing and the decisions that Sports Illustrated is making allow me to not only just be a part of Sports Illustrated but to tell my story through them. (It) was truly monumental for them. They acknowledge that the world needs to change, and why has it taken so long? A huge, prominent person in sports, (NBA star Dwyane) Wade, who is also from Chicago, reached out to me and congratulated me, sent me some bottles of wine — shout out to D-Wade! He’s raising a young trans daughter, and it was just truly powerful to know that the world is really changing in this moment.

What do you think it will feel like when you get your hands on a physical copy of the magazine?

I just… I honestly, oh my… even seeing a billboard of me anywhere just gives me chills. Because that was part of my vision board, you know? I would go to these places and see these billboards and just dream that one day that could be me. So the idea that there’s a magazine that’s on the level of Sports Illustrated that is acknowledging my life and what I do in this world with my life, wants me to be something, or sees something inside of me, that’s just truly powerful to me. This new generation of people, you ask them the names, you tell them the stories, and it doesn’t really click with them. But for me, who comes from that era of understanding before social media how powerful these spaces are, it’s just out of this world. I just pinch myself every time.

When it comes to trans women of color leveling the playing field both in and out of Hollywood, what’s next? What do you want to see leveled up next for trans women of color?

I want to see education level up. I think it’s important for me to pass on information just like information was passed onto me. Since we are in a time when education is always going to be a powerful tool, I definitely want to see how I can work in that environment, whether it’s me opening my own school or building a curriculum in a school to develop some type of information and data so people like me can have resources that I didn’t have when I was growing up.

What’s next for you?

One of my mentors, Carmen Xtravaganza, I’m writing her story. That was one thing she wants to leave on this Earth: just information and ideas and wisdom, and I want to put it in a book. After I write her book, I’m going to be writing my own book.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Chris Azzopardi is the Editorial Director of Pride Source Media Group and Q Syndicate, the national LGBTQ wire service. He has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Cher, Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, GQ and Billboard. Reach him via Twitter @chrisazzopardi.