Actor Alexandra Billings: 'If you don't understand our community, then pick up a damn book!'
The star of the new film Queen Tut tells Q about playing a trans character whose anger matches her own
Actor Alexandra Billings, from the Emmy-winning series Transparent, has enjoyed a career of many firsts. She played one of the first openly transgender characters on television in the made-for-TV movie Romy and Michele: In the Beginning. She was also the first trans person to star in the Broadway production of Wicked.
But for all of Billings' firsts, it's been rare that she gets to play a trans character whose political voice is as loud as her own. That's what made her so happy about her starring role in the brand new Canadian coming-of-age drama Queen Tut, the actor tells Q guest host Talia Schlanger in a recent conversation.
Billings plays Malibu, a leader in Toronto's LBTQ+ community, who's desperately trying to save her bar from the developer's wrecking ball.
"Malibu is basically me in much better clothes," she says.
The film's creative team let the veteran actor bring so much of herself to the character, especially when it came to the bar owner's motivations. "Why is [Malibu] mad? Why is she holding on to this bar? What does queer family mean? How important is LGBT history? That's my whole life," Billings says. "I mean, there's very little difference between me and her. I did very little acting."
The actor uniquely understood her character's disposition, because she is similarly enraged about how the world mistreats the queer community. "I'm mad most all the time," Billings says. "I'm angry at our country and the lack of empathy. I am angry at the humans in it for their inability to understand and educate. I am resentful at people who are not curious about things that are not living next door to them."
WATCH | Official trailer for Queen Tut:
The 61-year-old actor, who marched with ACT UP co-founder and gay rights activist Larry Kramer, says she's felt a pent up rage with the "white cis patriarchy" growing for a couple generations now — and it seems to be coming to a head.
"If you don't understand our community," she says, "then pick up a damn book, you idiot … Do not ask me a question you wouldn't want your own mother asked. Do not treat me in a way you wouldn't treat your children. Don't walk into my house or my church — meaning like a theatre or a restaurant or any queer space — like you wouldn't walk into your own."
None of this should be difficult to understand, she says. It's a simple matter of mutual respect. "You may not like me. I don't care. You may not agree with my life. I don't care. You may not like my marriage … I don't care. What I care about is for you to honour my journey the way I am forced to honour yours."
The full interview with Alexandra Billings is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Alexandra Billings produced by Kaitlyn Swan.
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