Whether he’s playing Karen Walker’s nemesis Beverly Leslie on “Will & Grace,” a variety of “unique” character in movies and television, or acting his life story out on stage for audiences nationwide, Leslie Jordan always has something to say about being gay.
You’re from the South… where did you grow up?
I grew up about an hour and a half above Atlanta in a little town in Chattanooga, Tennessee called Missionary Ridge... which you can have it if you want!
No thanks, I’ll stick with Atlanta. You lived here for a while also, right?
Well I came out of the closet in 1973 and had to find my tribes, so I moved to Atlanta. I was always sort of out but not really… I mean I had been sneaking into gay bars since I was 16!
You wrote and starred in the independent film “Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel,” which was a real hotel once located in Atlanta.
The Pershing Point Hotel was at the corner of Peachtree and West Peachtree, just filled with hookers, whores, and queers. It was sort of like the Chelsea Hotel in New York City…home to lots of rift-raft. I lived there for a time in the seventies when I first got to Atlanta and was both literally and figuratively lost. I used to get so high I couldn’t even find my apartment! It was right at the start of Atlanta’s growing gay scene… I remember Colony Square was being built, and Piedmont Park and Ansley Mall were becoming the places to go if you were gay. I’ve only been back to Atlanta about once or twice since I moved to Hollywood.
What was it like being gay and growing up in the South?
Sitting on the pews of a Baptist church in Tennessee is where I really learned to hate myself. You feel so abandoned when you’re gay and raised in the church. My spiritual advisor once said to me, “you’re a fag hating fag.” I quickly realized that growing up in a devout Christian home was the cause of a lot of my problems. I didn’t have a choice being gay – I mean I literally fell out of my mother’s womb and landed in her high heels!
Now that you’ve been sober for years, can you talk about your addiction?
It’s funny… when I was loaded I had no trouble being gay. So I stayed loaded for 30 years! The seventies were all about disco and Quaaludes, the eighties were about cocaine and lots of money, and in the 90s everyone was dead from AIDS. You can drink forever, but I had to quit doing drugs because I really thought I was going to die. Then all of a sudden I was 40 years old and didn’t know how to be gay without them.
Is it true you went to jail five times?
Well I was very popular in the L.A. County Jail… but I don’t think for the right reasons! I’m a big talker, which is a great if you’re in jail. Being able to tell stories helps a lot, especially if you’re four foot eleven!
You played “Brother Boy,” a cross-dressing gay man who desperately needed attention in the movie “Sordid Lives.” Where you always so dramatic?
Oh yes… I used to pull out my pee pee in malls to get attention! My mother always said, “can’t you just whisper your problems out to a therapist instead of acting them out for the world to see?” My friend Del Shores wrote “Sordid Lives,” which was actually four short plays that ended up all together. My part of the movie was a play called “The Dehomosexualization of Brother Boy.”
How is your life now?
I am a lot happier now and am artistically saturated thanks to this play. I loved that I had a say in the writing and a director who encouraged me along with my vision. I got a lot of notoriety for doing “Will & Grace,” but I was sort of aging show pony. They’d trot me out on stage, I’d do my thing, then they’d trot me back off. “Like A Dog on Linoleum” is about my real-life journey into sobriety and queerdom.
Your character on “Will & Grace” is obviously gay but in the closet. Do you wish more gay actors would come out?
Yeah. You know lesbians have their heroes in Ellen and Rosie, but gay men don’t really have any. I sort of wish a big butch athlete would come out. What I learned from working on “Will & Grace” was that we can put a face on homophobia through laughter.
Despite your childhood, are you a religious person now?
Well someone once said “religion is for people who are afraid of going to Hell, and spirituality is for people who have already been there.” Even though I feel like I was spiritually raped as a child, I’m now a deeply spiritual person.
Are you looking forward to coming back to Atlanta?
Oh I am so excited to come back and be in Atlanta, because it’s the South and only an hour and a half from my hometown. Plus it’s the summertime! When “Like A Dog on Linoleum” was playing in L.A. I would walk out on stage and know that there were about four Southerner’s in the audience. Sometimes I felt like I was at a pony show! I know Atlanta will love it. I’m like Ethel Merman -- I can cry out of one eye and work the stage with the other, so get ready!
- For more on Leslie Jordan visit his official site BrotherBoy.com.
More Leslie Jordan:
* Learn more in the new guidebook from OUT Magazine:
The Out Traveler: Atlanta now available at your local bookstore.
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