It all started with Rufus Wainwright in his bathrobe. The crooner, at the forefront of virtual pandemic performances in March 2020, performed a song a day at his home piano in the Hollywood Hills during [...]
Without any positive trans role models, Brian Michael Smith grew up in 1980s Michigan thinking a Black transman couldn’t be an actor. He wasn’t seeing himself on TV, or anywhere. But now and then, things [...]
File this under 2020’s “Content We Lived” category: "Social Distance," Netflix’s anthology series completely conceived, cast and shot in quarantine. Tucked into the show’s eight episodes is “Zero Feet Away,” which follows a gay couple [...]
Dolly Parton’s been everywhere this year, and everywhere she’s gone – virtually, that is – she’s brought good, gay tidings to all. Dolly’s contributions to both science and Christmas amidst our collective existential pandemic [...]
Kristen Stewart is waving around what appears to be a joint. Even her "Happiest Season" co-star Mackenzie Davis, who’s seen on Zoom with Stewart, doesn’t quite know exactly what Stewart has lit. “Oh my god,” [...]
Few know their way around a funeral scene like master of mortality Alan Ball. The writer-director-producer had his fair share of time to get it just right while his crowning jewel of a series, "Six [...]
The light falling on R&B queen Brandy is casting tiny rainbows that dance above her head. She’s looking up at them, telling me what she sees. Little rainbows everywhere. On an ordinary day, sure, this [...]
She admits it took several painful years, but gay icon and Latin pop trailblazer Gloria Estefan is now in a "really good place" with her 25-year-old daughter Emily, who is openly queer. After working on [...]
A lot has happened this year, and that’s aside from Jim Parsons dancing around in a bra. That bit, of course, graced screens across the world thanks to Netflix’s "Hollywood," the "Big Bang Theory" actor [...]
If you want to know how musical chameleon Shamir is right now, expect the 25-year-old to answer much like he approaches making music. In both cases, he doesn’t like to repeat himself. “I’ve done a [...]
It was 30 years ago when Reba McEntire – music legend, gay icon, the epitome of country glamour – made Bobby Gentry’s “Fancy” her own. A feminist statement about a woman who turns to sex [...]
That scene. You know the one: the one in "Basic Instinct" where Sharon Stone’s legs are open. It’s been talked about and talked about, and talked about some more. It’s been talked about so much [...]
The name Rod Thomas might not be instantly recognizable, but it’s likely you’ve come across the one he uses on stage. As Bright Light Bright Light, Thomas has been a staple of the international LGBTQ [...]
“Now that I have a massive platform, and now that the people want to listen to the Black sissy, I’m gonna talk,” Billy Porter says, fired up, leaning into the camera. On Zoom, Porter commands [...]
Writer-actress Paula Pell knows it’s ridiculous: a dowdy, out-of-touch suburban broad with an accent that is somehow a little British – or Irish, or something – who solves murders in her quaint town. But the [...]
Jessie Ware sees all the fan-sent rainbow emojis on her Twitter feed, and “definitely a lot of Spanish writing and I don’t know what they’re saying to me but I love it,” gushes the British [...]
Sitting somewhere with an abstract-art background obscuring her precise location, (Dixie) Chicks frontwoman Natalie Maines erupts into an explosive maybe-I-shouldn’t cackle during our Zoom call as she talks about how she’s about to get in [...]
As closeted Russian pop prince Alexander Lemtov, actor Dan Stevens shows up in the Netflix comedy "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga" bejeweled in rhinestones, with a moppy head of Wham!-era George Michael [...]
'Paris Is Burning' In "Paris Is Burning," a strut is a defiant act, an exertion of suppressed power. In the mid-to-late 1980s, when the landmark documentary was filmed, these moves couldn’t be showcased just anywhere. [...]
Once Keiynan Lonsdale made no apologies for who he is, the music followed suit. The star of the CW’s "The Flash" and 2018’s gay teen comedy "Love, Simon" celebrates his Black queer identity on his [...]
The coronavirus pandemic has forced Pride events around the world to go virtual this year. For Jason Mraz, that means he can, for the first time, take part in the annual summer festivities. After all, [...]
Actor Haaz Sleiman is on a mission to take part in stories that broaden the pool of queer perspectives on the screen. And if you already know his work, you know he’s on a roll. [...]
The day before I got on a call with Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, famously known as the Indigo Girls, the longtime folk-rock duo and LGBTQ activists were playing a set for fans during a [...]
In her second book, "Resistance: A Songwriter’s Story of Hope, Change, and Courage," flaming piano queen Tori Amos shares her personal stories against a world-in-crisis backdrop and discusses how they’ve shaped songs from her three-decade [...]
I really hadn’t planned on telling queer powerhouse singer-actress-activist Janelle Monáe that I made food for my boyfriend the night before I got on Zoom with her. That afternoon, Monáe was feeling it all. This [...]
Gay porn is not what straight, religious-conservative married couple Barry and Karen Mason thought they’d become known for. But for over 35 years, they owned a bookstore that sold videos like “Confessions of a Two [...]
In Ryan Murphy’s "Hollywood," the wife becomes the boss, the “black screenwriter” is simply a screenwriter, and the gay leading man is just himself. Naturally, it stars Broadway icon Patti LuPone, who, in conversations like [...]
Throughout her dynamic three-decade career, Melissa Etheridge has beat cancer and weathered the devastating emotional toll of the AIDS crisis. Having overcome her own battles, the music legend consequently became a beacon of strength, resilience [...]
Under any other conditions, it might seem strange to tell Sean Hayes what I’m wearing. Given that Hayes dons a plush robe to play a do-nothing cisgender woman named Susan O'Connell – hence the movie’s [...]
So, about doing an LGBTQ press interview such as this one: coveted out country music singer-songwriter Brandy Clark is really into it. “This is exciting for me,” she tells me one recent afternoon. To be [...]
The first openly gay actor to play an openly gay series regular in a leading role on TV, Wilson Cruz has witnessed firsthand the changing tides of TV representation. Cruz paved the way for shows [...]
Chill vibes permeated his 2018 self-titled solo album, but Jake Shears feels like dancing again. Shears’ latest single “Meltdown” is a club banger with shared Scissor Sisters disco DNA – which is exactly the point. [...]
On her new album, "Love & Conflict," Martha Wash is far removed from her disco days, when she became known as half of The Weather Girls. With the late Izora Rhodes-Armstead, the duo began their [...]
It’s not necessarily all about that bass. It’s also all about that time Sam Smith – yes, that Sam Smith – slipped Meghan Trainor some singles so she could tip some Meghan Trainor drag queens. [...]
After four decades of speculation that they were romantically involved, Robyn Crawford has spoken her truth: She loved Whitney Houston. In her heartfelt autobiography released late last year, "A Song for You: My Life with [...]
Dolly was there, almost, holding court despite her lack of humanness, as queer writers on assignment huddled giddily in front of her, awe-stricken by the realness of a fake Dolly. I stood, out of body, [...]
10. Miranda Lambert, 'Wildcard' After flooding a sublime double-disc album with her post-divorce feelings (hey, divorce is hard!), Miranda Lambert got her groove back and then finally decided that life is “pretty bitchin,’” a sentiment [...]
“Oh my god, you’re gonna make me cry, stop it,” Charlize Theron tells me at the end of our recent phone conversation, humbled. But I’m simply being honest when I express gratitude for her continued [...]
#GayTwitter icon Laura Dern’s queer cultural contributions – being the first to hug Ellen DeGeneres after she came out publicly, the Renata Klein memes, the belted khaki shorts in "Jurassic Park" – are bountiful fodder [...]
When Jennifer Beals speaks to the universe, the universe listens. Or at least it did this one time while the 55-year-old actress was on a hike. She can’t recall the exact year, but it was [...]
Thirteen minutes with Jamie Lee Curtis was not quite enough time to find out why, even though it was “very important to me” to investigate the sexuality of one of her characters, she’s never considered [...]
Polyester John Waters staged a live chicken decapitation for his 1969 debut feature "Mondo Trasho." In the following year’s "Multiple Maniacs," he made anal sex with rosary beads a thing. And in "Pink Flamingos," [...]
Elizabeth Banks is here for all your lesbian-energy needs. After starring in "Pitch Perfect," which never quite gave a cappella group members Beca and Chloe the full-on queer relationship fans (and even star Anna Kendrick) [...]
In June, the queen of modern country music, Miranda Lambert, stood alongside her gay brother, Luke, his husband and her own cop-husband, Brendan McLoughlin, at WorldPride in New York City. She beamed as brightly as [...]
In his 2018 debut music video “Girly,” singer-songwriter-director John Duff is seen imitating some of music’s biggest pop icons, replicating the shot-by-shot choreography of Madonna’s “Hung Up” video and Mariah Carey's gesticulations and eyelash-batting in [...]
You very well may have uncovered a truer you thanks to John Cameron Mitchell. Maybe it happened while you were experiencing some kind of divine queer intervention through soul-searching heroine Hedwig Robinson, who comes into [...]
At this point, "American Idol" is a mere footnote in Adam Lambert’s undaunted, venturesome, decade-long career. It was 2009 when Lambert astonished gays and moms with his confident strut and those sky-high notes, ultimately giving [...]
It’s 8:30 in Italy, and maybe if Mika didn’t feel so deeply connected to his new album he’d just want to go to bed. But the sparky glam-pop performer doesn’t mind my before-bed call; in [...]
Kristin Chenoweth likes to say that if it can’t be explained, it must be the unicorns. Why does she have so many gay fans? Well, you’re only partially right if you thought it was because [...]
Trisha Yearwood has never cared what the country community thought of her LGBTQ allyship, so why start now? The country music icon, who has lent her robust and emotionally resonant mezzo-soprano to hit songs like [...]
