Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman Quotes

I love it when novels contain a broad cast of characters, including queer ones.

When I first started performing, the only community that truly got what I was trying to do was the LGBTQ community.

As an actor, it was important to me to play gay characters because, growing up, it was something I never really saw done on television and in film, and I was questioning why there weren't more people like me.

I hope we see more avenues for representation. More TV shows and films starring queer people, especially QPOC and nonbinary folks, more mainstream press coverage of our artwork and fashion, and more representation of our interests within politics.

I'm friends with Kehlani - she's a LGBTQ icon.

The fact that I'm able to portray these complex, fully realized, queer Asian characters? I never thought it would be in this position. You just never see those types of characters and that type of representation.

I think that there's not always been queer person of color representation in pop and so I'm making the most of it because that is who I am.

I would definitely love to see a queer rom-com because representation matters. It does so much to help normalize things in the mind of society.

So much of what I do is inspired by and for the LGBTQ community and for everyone but, just, being a theater kid and wanting to do stuff that represents us in a positive light.

There are expectations in how you play your character as a black woman, to be sassy and the same kind of feel, as if there are no quirky black women. I struggle with those things constantly, trying to add dimension to my work, and that's the goal, too.

I used to say in interviews that I don't necessarily want to be the first black woman or first model to do certain things; I just want to see it done.

The representation of gay characters on screen is important for us all to think about because there are sadly too few representations of gay characters on screen in mainstream cinema. If Marvel starts making movies about gay superheroes, then we'll be in a really great place. We're not at that place.

I'm not a gay rights activist.

I feel like I've been observed as an individual more than a gay person, or as a filmmaker with a certain point of view rather than a lesbian filmmaker with a gay point of view.

We don't want to be our own niche. We're filmmakers like everybody. How many years in a row are we going to talk about the fact that we make films and we are women? Enough already.

Woody Allen is really the ultimate. I love that he believed in himself enough to do what he did. And I have that same feeling - that there's nobody that looks like me in movies, nobody would cast me as a romantic lead, but I want to do it and I feel confident that I can.

I thought, 'Oh, this is great,' because maybe someone who does look like me will watch 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.' and realize that they can be an actor if they want to be, or they can be a superhero. They can have a hero that looks like them as well.

Seeing the road show of 'A Chorus Line' in 1977 at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Memphis was a life-changing event for me: there were gay people, on the stage, and they all lived in New York.

I think that instead of feminism being a political thing, it should be an act of creativity. It's more of a rock n' roll thing.

In America, I am brown; I'm 'of colour', so I would be offered Latin roles, and I've fought against that. I don't want to be put in a category, to be just offered the same sort of thing. For me, it's all about different roles, telling the stories of the great writers.

And I'd like to believe that's true, you know, kind of showing gay people in this kind of light and - where it's not about that, it's just about the characters for the first time, like those shows were.

For me, every music video is a hurdle. Every time I do a music video, I'm constantly fighting to get my point across. As a gay woman, that's also a big hurdle.

I want to produce untapped voices, find people and help them get their platform.

There was a criticism of 'Milk' that I found truth in, which was that it was focused on gay white men.

I probably haven't had enough gay characters in my stuff. When you're writing something, you're thinking, 'Why couldn't this person be black, white, gay?'