Alexandra Billings: Transgender Acting Legend | LGBTQ+ Elders Project

LGBTQ&A

Jeffrey Masters

Society & Culture

4.7 • 703 Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alexandra Billings is redefining what is possible for our community. Before making a name for herself in the Chicago theatre scene and landing her breakout role in the TV show, Transparent, Alexandra was a showgirl and sex worker struggling with addiction. "I ate, I breathed oxygen, I had sex, and I did drugs, all with great, reckless abandon."

There is zero precedent for Alexandra's remarkable career—she is currently starring in The Conners on ABC and just completed a run as Madame Morrible in Wicked on Broadway—and she joins us on the podcast to talk about recording it all in her new memoir, This Time For Me.

This is part of our new LGBTQ+ Elders Project. Click here to listen to our recent interview with the 87-year-old trans elder, Barbara Satin.

LGBTQ&A is hosted by Jeffrey Masters and produced by The Advocate magazine, in partnership with GLAAD. A condensed transcript of each week's interview is posted on The Advocate's website in the afternoon (or earlier, if I drink enough coffee). Follow us on Twitter: @lgbtqpod

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, I'm Jeffrey Masters, and we talk all the time on here about representation.
0:07.6	Representation mostly in terms of the increases we've seen of queer and trans people on screen,
0:14.2	but I also think about representation in terms of one's background, their own personal history.
0:21.6	For example, before Alexander Billings became the actress you've seen in shows like
0:26.2	Transparent and on Broadway starring as Madam Morble and Wicked, before all that, she was a sex
0:32.5	worker, a drug addict, she was homeless for a time, she's also trans and living with HIV, and I say all that
0:39.1	because I think the assumption would be that someone with that kind of history could not have
0:44.3	the career that she has had. Historically, we as a society have not lifted up people like that.
0:51.1	We don't cast them, we don't give them awards, and so I love that that is beginning
0:56.1	to change. We are actively changing what kind of future is possible for our community. And today,
1:03.8	Alexander Billings is here to talk about that. We talk about her extraordinary and unlikely career,
1:10.2	and also her new book, that's a memoir,
1:12.6	and is out now that's called This Time for Me.
1:16.5	And then before we get to it, there is a small reference to a suicide attempt, just a heads-up there.
1:21.6	And from The Advocate magazine in partnership with Glad, this is LGBTQ and A.
1:32.9	So I first interviewed you back in 2017, and we actually were backstage in the LA LGBT
1:41.3	Center before your one-woman show.
1:49.9	And, you know, the list of performers who have given me chills when they sing is small,
1:51.2	and you are on there.
1:52.5	Oh, bless your heart.
1:53.2	Oh, my good.
1:54.0	Well, that's very kind.
	...

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