Photography by Benedict Evans.Styling by Michael Cook. Groomer: Angela Dicarlo. Sweater by H&M. Jacket by Tommy Hilfiger.

This year’s winner in the battle of the summer ingenues? Huw Collins, the 28-year-old Welshman who had exactly one short film to his credit when he landed the role of a Jekyll-and-Hyde psychiatrist on the chronically buzzy ABC Family/Freeform hit Pretty Little Liars. “It’s come a little faster than I planned,” Collins admits. “I still have a lot to learn.”

You’d never guess it. Collins is irresistible on the show in more ways than one, turning from a compassionate American shrink to a British baddie on a dime, and he’s fast becoming a brilliant addition to the soap-opera canon. The former rugby player jetted to America two years ago after playing Dorian Gray in a regional U.K. play. Since debuting on the second half of PLL’s sixth season six months ago, he’s gained 30,000 new Instagram followers. “Going from a complete unknown to being somewhat known — this is a really good show to do it on,” he says, “because you’ve got this wild, passionate fan base.”

Still, he confesses it’s been a bit traumatizing being a pretty face on a series that has the prettiest faces per capita on television. “I remarked to [my costar] Shay Mitchell the other day, ‘I hope you don’t mind me looking like a potato when we film together,’ ” he says. “It can be a bit chastening to stand around with such an attractive cast.”

Collins recently experienced his first paparazzi shoot, in which the Daily Mail ran more photos of him doing a shirtless beach workout than was necessary (well, maybe not). “My finest hour!” he says. “I got a lot of texts from British friends I hadn’t heard from in a long time, a lot of skeletons coming out of the closet — some who didn’t know I was an actor. My aunts texted me, and I said I’d keep my shirt on next time. They said, ‘No, don’t do that!’ ”

No doubt his disciples are hoping for more pec and ab time when Pretty Little Liars returns for its seventh season June 21. “Guys suggest I take my top off a bit more than girls, but not by much. Since I moved to L.A., I have more gay friends than straight friends,” says Collins, who is married to Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen’s daughter. “You can come to L.A. to be whatever you want to be, which is the great, great thing about this town.” 

Hew Collins returns in Pretty Little Liars on June 21.

Like what you see here? Subscribe and be the first to receive the latest issue of OUT. Subscribe to print here and receive a complimentary digital subscription.

“I was incredibly nervous,” says B.D. Wong of taking on his role as a transgender hacker in the first season of USA’s Golden Globe–winning tech thriller Mr. Robot. Yet if anyone could, well, hack it, why not him? The versatile actor brought Broadway to its feet playing a male spy disguised as a female opera diva in 1988’s M. Butterfly. Still, that did nothing to assuage his anxiety about portraying the mysterious Whiterose, who returns for Robot’s second season in July.

Out: You were anxious about playing trans, but you received such acclaim for playing another gender before.

B.D. Wong: When you get an offer to do a TV show, you don’t always know where the producers are coming from. I said, “Whoa, I don’t want to exploit a maligned community of people.” The last thing I wanted to be was a man disguised as a woman. I think that’s old. 

What sold you?

Sam [Esmail, Mr. Robot’s creator] was able to allay my fears: He said Whiterose wasn’t a man disguised as a woman — she was a woman disguised as a man. And that was very different to me. There are things in the second season we keep having dialogue about: “Tell me why this is happening, so I can be comfortable with it.”

Had you had the chance to play another gender since M. Butterfly?

It hadn’t come up in 25 years. My 28-year-old self thought I’d never do it again — that if I did, I’d never get out of doing it. Besides, there was never going to be a part again as good as that one. But I thought, This is interesting. It’s time for me to bury any stigma I had about doing it again.

How did you adjust to Whiterose’s hair and makeup?

[Laughs] I had to dismantle this hard drive with these really long fingernails on. And I had these toweringly fabulous shoes. Nobody ever saw them, but I insisted on wearing them all night. There was a lot of physical discomfort involved. It was a nightmare of props and costumes crashing together. 

Mr. Robot Season 2 returns July 13 on USA.

Like what you see here? Subscribe and be the first to receive the latest issue of OUT. Subscribe to print here and receive a complimentary digital subscription.

B.D. Wongs on Playing Trans (and Badass) in Mr. Robot Season 2

B.D. Wongs on Playing Trans (and Badass) in Mr. Robot Season 2

From Hedwig to Lemony Snicket, Neil Patrick Harris has entered his dark period.

After years of chasing a laugh track on How I Met Your Mother, the actor is following roles in Gone Girl and American Horror Story with Netflix’s new Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, based on the classic children’s books. In the new super-stylized series, Harris stars as the villainous Olaf, who becomes the guardian of three orphans solely to abscond with their fortune.

“I’m drawn to puzzles and darkness,” says Harris. “The Alfred Hitchcock–y vibe is something I’ve been into since I was kid, and I loved Gene Wilder’s take on Willy Wonka and Bridge to Terabithia.”

Aside from being just plain rotten, Harris’s alter ego is also a rotten aspiring musical-theater actor — basically, a much crappier, much uglier version of himself.

“Playing someone so miserable makes things hard to complain about,” says Harris, who spends two and a half hours having prosthetics applied for the role. “I can ingest my annoyances and use them.” 

Like what you see here? Subscribe and be the first to receive the latest issue of Out. Subscribe to print here and receive a complimentary digital subscription.

Photography by Jeff Riedel. Photographed at the 11 Howard Hotel, New York.Styling by Karen Levitt. Hair: Matthew Monzon for Jed Root. Makeup: Gita Bass for Starworks. Jumpsuit by Agent Provocateur. Bracelet by Chanel. Dress by CD Greene.

Christina Ricci rushes into a Williamsburg brunch spot, a bit flushed and flustered, and apologizes for being late (which she is not). “I just got in from SoulCycle,” she says, “and I have to go pick up my kid in an hour!”

The former wild child of indie cinema — who once eye-rolled her way through interviews, shooting from the hip with incendiary statements such as suggesting incest is “natural” — is now a clock-conscious, multitasking mother of a 2-year-old, happily married and living in a Brooklyn brownstone. It might seem a world away from her various snarky, sinister personae (Wednesday Addams, Lizzie Borden, the home-wrecking teen tart Dedee Truitt, from 1998’s The Opposite of Sex), but Ricci, now 36, hasn’t lost her edge (or, for that matter, her cherubic looks — she looks a decade younger). She has, in fact, just wrapped one of the richest, most intriguing, and, it must be said, most naked roles of her career. 

In the new Amazon series Z: The Beginning of Everything, Ricci plays Zelda Fitzgerald, wealthy flapper wife to The Great Gatsby author F. Scott, Jazz Age proto-feminist, and the original party girl. The couple wedded young, sparred often, and drank more. Ricci describes them as “two young arrogant narcissists who got in over their heads,” and as Zelda, and as Zelda, she is a saucy, coquettish Southern belle — half Blanche DuBois, half Blanche Devereaux. Anyone familiar with the Fitzgeralds’ story, though, knows Zelda’s dark fate: The free-spirited socialite and novelist spiraled into alcoholism and madness, literally driven insane by the restrictions placed on her by society and her husband. (She eventually died in a hospital fire.)

Related | The Great Gag-sby: Christina Ricci Channels Zelda Fitzgerald

The performance would be a full meal for any actress, but Ricci produced the series, too, adapting it from a biography she discovered. “I feel like Zelda is the most realistic, well-rounded, fully fleshed-out, and fully explored person I’ve played,” says Ricci. “Also, I’ve never played a romantic lead — ever.” She continues, “Zelda was someone intelligent enough to see through facades. She didn’t have a lot of self-control and burst a lot of bubbles. She was a very self-aware young person, in the middle of this world, not from this world, who was able to judge it. Maybe she didn’t always have the best time, because she didn’t buy into the bullshit. She was smart enough to know when people were full of shit.”

For Ricci fans, this may sound familiar. “I related to it, so I was certainly able to put my perspective on things,” she says. “I think probably because I was a child in a very surreal world, I try to find the normalcy in everything in life, in every situation. Where’s the human thing amid the craziness?”

She specifically related to Zelda’s mental state. “When I was younger I thought that at a certain point I was going to have a nervous breakdown,” says Ricci. “I really thought that was part of life, because every woman I read about was put away at some point because they were too difficult to deal with. I was like, Oh, gosh, so at 40 I’m going to have to go away. Even my grandmother had nervous breakdowns and was put in asylums. I think it’s just how they dealt with difficult women back then.”

There’s the old Ricci, that beloved renegade. And although she rues those impish interviews of her youth — “They were hilarious, but so ridiculous, and I paid a price for them” — she doesn’t regret her long-standing, almost genetic tendency to rock the boat. “I’ve always considered gay men to be my people,” she says. “I’m very upfront and unapologetic, and I find that’s what gay people respond to. I think that’s something that’s appealing for people who’ve had to fight really hard to be who they are. And I just can’t be any other way.”   

Like what you see here? Subscribe and be the first to receive the latest issue of Out. Subscribe to print here and receive a complimentary digital subscription.

Just when you thought ’70s remakes were played out, Dax Shepard (Parenthood) has made the one that should have come first. With his new movie CHiPs—which he wrote, directed and stars in—he hopes to revive all the khaki-covered gay fantasies sparked by a classic show about two SoCal motorcycle cops. 

Why did you want to make a movie about these guys?

Separately they’re idiots, but together they’re a perfect human being. My character, Jon, is an emotional genius, and Ponch (Michael Peña) is a logical genius. Plus, having grown up in Minnesota, I loved the California setting. The motorcycles and Jon and Ponch—it was like taking a vacation every week.

You really get into the origins of homophobia.

When I meet Ponch, I’m in the locker room wearing skintight underwear. You can definitely see my penis, and I go to hug him, and he’s not into that. So I go, “Hey, if you’re homophobic, I respect your right to be.” And he says, “That’s not the definition of homophobia.” We end up exploring that, and it’s never done in this generic, alpha-male way. It’s sincere.

There’s actually a lot of penis humor in the movie.

My wife [Kristen Bell] has the hardest time understanding my fascination with this, but I think the penis is one of the most tried-and-true comedic tropes there is. It’s just so goofy that we have this thing hanging between our legs. She doesn’t agree with me.

She thinks it’s dramatic?

I think she feels a bit of ownership over it.

I read you did your own stunts.

A lot of them. I’m a very confident stunt car driver and pretty good on a motorcycle. But there’s a ton of tricks I can’t claim to have done. There was a stunt guy named God Bod who emasculated me daily, and I was grateful for it. 

You look jacked.

One of the kids who worked on the film is Zac Efron’s brother. I said, “Ask your brother for tips.” He sent back, like, an 11-page thing. It was the most scientific approach to looking good with your shirt off: “15 minutes before your scene, you’re going to have seven nuts. Then you’re going to have a glass of water and do 22 push-ups.” No wonder nobody has a chance.

Rumor has it you have one of the largest endowments in Hollywood. True?

I can’t say for certain. But there’s no reason someone with Karl Malden’s nose and a weak chin should be as confident as I am.

Like what you see here? Subscribe and be the first to receive the latest issue of Out. Subscribe to print here and receive a complimentary digital subscription.

“Yup, he’s a bisexual warlock,” says Harry Shum Jr. of his 400-year-old character on the Freefrom fantasy series Shadowhunters. “When you live that long, you have some stories.” 

Ever since Anne Rice poured a sarcophagus’s worth of same-sex longing into her vampire novels, fans of the genre have jonesed for homoerotic action among creatures of the night. Shadowhunters has plenty of it. Shum plays Magnus, the immortal leader of a supernatural coven in modern-day New York City who pursues both demons and his mortal boyfriend, Alec (Matthew Daddario). Magnus’s darkness was a big draw for the Glee vet, who was also eager to dive into a subculture—not bloodsuckers, but bi guys. He links it to his own heritage. “Bisexuality isn’t really talked about in the mainstream,” he says. “It’s like me being an Asian Latino American—there aren’t many of us.”

The 35-year-old actor’s main goal is to portray a queer relationship in a way that’s never been seen on TV. Of course, the idea that Magnus’s love will literally never die helps, but for him it’s more than that. “I look at it the same way as Asian stereotypes on TV,” Shum says. “Why would I want to play that? I want to find uniqueness and capture it every time Magnus and Alec have intimate scenes.” Here’s hoping for many of those scenes when the show returns in June.

Photography: Greg Vaughan
Styling: Michael Cook
Photographed at the NoMo Soho Hotel, New York
Groomer: Scott McMahan at Kate Ryan Inc
Shirt: Perry Ellis

Like what you see here? Subscribe and be the first to receive the latest issue of Out. Subscribe to print here and receive a complimentary digital subscription.

Shadowhunters Star Harry Shum Jr. on Playing a Bisexual Demon Slayer

Shadowhunters Star Harry Shum Jr. on Playing a Bisexual Demon Slayer

Matthew Daddario calls his Shadowhunters alter ego, Alec, “an ideal kind of man.” And while the character, a mortal living in a world of supernatural demon fighters, is easy to look at, that’s not what the 29-year-old New York–born actor means. “Alec is the best,” he says. “He cares about others more than himself, and he’s learned how to care for himself.” Daddario sighs. “But he’s young.”

This posed a problem in the show’s first season when Alec fell for head warlock Magnus (Harry Shum Jr.) but remained in the closet, offering what Daddario calls “the emotional availability of a rock.” 

Related | Shadowhunters Star Harry Shum Jr. on Playing a Bisexual Demon Slayer

Luckily, in season two (returning to Freeform on June 5), Alec has come out. “When he finally meets somebody he can open up to, it forces him to realize who he is,” says Daddario. “He becomes a more capable, better human being.”

Fans are swooning now that Alec and Magnus'’ship is real—they’ve nicknamed them “Malec”—even if one recent scene, in which Alec pushes Magnus into a room before they finally consummate their lust, caused a bit of an online kerfuffle over the idea of consent. But Daddario is just happy viewers are paying attention. “People read into things and are sometimes very capable of understanding what the writers were thinking,” he says. “Other times, they don’t quite get it right. But it’s largely been positive.”

Photography: Greg Vaughan
Styling: Michael Cook
Groomer: Scott McMahan at Kate Ryan Inc.
Jacket & shirt: Ermenegildo Zegna
Photographed at the NoMo Soho Hotel, New York

Like what you see here? Subscribe and be the first to receive the latest issue of Out. Subscribe to print here and receive a complimentary digital subscription.

How Gay Love Helped Matthew Daddario's Shadowhunters Character Grow

How Gay Love Helped Matthew Daddario's Shadowhunters Character Grow

“It’s a beautiful melting pot of humanity,” says Daniel Newman of AMC’s The Walking Dead. This may seem like a rose-colored description for an infamously gory zombie opera. But Newman, who plays Daniel, one of the Kingdom’s top soldiers, has another perspective. “I couldn’t be on a better show, because it’s all about diversity,” he says. “It has every ethnicity, every background.”

And now, its first openly queer actor. In March, Newman posted a seven-minute YouTube video in which he came out (though he eschewed using any labels). The 35-year-old Atlanta native, who has also appeared in Homeland and The Vampire Diaries, says he was motivated to open up after volunteering at a shelter for homeless LGBTQ youth. “I got to a point where things were too easy,” he explains. “You know when you just have something in your gut that’s like, What am I living for? If I’m not going to be authentic and make a difference in other people’s lives, I’m not satisfied with my life.”

If putting himself out there to help others is his new raison d’être, Newman is realizing it in more ways than one. He also recently posed for British GQ’s 2017 Red Hot Exposed calendar, which features 12 totally nude redheaded male models (proceeds go to the anti-bullying charity The Diana Award). Newman is June, and his photo, the calendar’s most risqué image, also landed him on its cover. 

Meanwhile, he’s already at work on Dead’s upcoming eighth season. Though he can’t reveal any details, he’s effusive when discussing his fan base. He returns to that melting-pot analogy. “People always tell me, ‘I hate my family, but Sunday night we all come together for The Walking Dead,’” Newman says. “It’s amazing to be a part of something that unites people.”

Photograhy: Greg Vaughan
Styling: Michael Cook
Groomer: Scott McMahan (Kate Ryan Inc)
Sweater & Jeans: Tom Ford
Photographed at the NoMo Soho Hotel, New York

Like what you see here? Subscribe and be the first to receive the latest issue of Out. Subscribe to print here and receive a complimentary digital subscription.

Walking Dead Star Daniel Newman is Fighting Evil & Stripping Down

Walking Dead Star Daniel Newman is Fighting Evil & Stripping Down

Photography by Jeff Riedel. Photographed at the 11 Howard Hotel, New York.Styling by Karen Levitt. Hair: Matthew Monzon for Jed Root. Makeup: Gita Bass for Starworks. Jumpsuit by Agent Provocateur. Bracelet by Chanel. Dress by CD Greene.

Christina Ricci rushes into a Williamsburg brunch spot, a bit flushed and flustered, and apologizes for being late (which she is not). “I just got in from SoulCycle,” she says, “and I have to go pick up my kid in an hour!”

The former wild child of indie cinema — who once eye-rolled her way through interviews, shooting from the hip with incendiary statements such as suggesting incest is “natural” — is now a clock-conscious, multitasking mother of a 2-year-old, happily married and living in a Brooklyn brownstone. It might seem a world away from her various snarky, sinister personae (Wednesday Addams, Lizzie Borden, the home-wrecking teen tart Dedee Truitt, from 1998’s The Opposite of Sex), but Ricci, now 36, hasn’t lost her edge (or, for that matter, her cherubic looks — she looks a decade younger). She has, in fact, just wrapped one of the richest, most intriguing, and, it must be said, most naked roles of her career. 

In the new Amazon series Z: The Beginning of Everything, Ricci plays Zelda Fitzgerald, wealthy flapper wife to The Great Gatsby author F. Scott, Jazz Age proto-feminist, and the original party girl. The couple wedded young, sparred often, and drank more. Ricci describes them as “two young arrogant narcissists who got in over their heads,” and as Zelda, and as Zelda, she is a saucy, coquettish Southern belle — half Blanche DuBois, half Blanche Devereaux. Anyone familiar with the Fitzgeralds’ story, though, knows Zelda’s dark fate: The free-spirited socialite and novelist spiraled into alcoholism and madness, literally driven insane by the restrictions placed on her by society and her husband. (She eventually died in a hospital fire.)

Related | The Great Gag-sby: Christina Ricci Channels Zelda Fitzgerald

The performance would be a full meal for any actress, but Ricci produced the series, too, adapting it from a biography she discovered. “I feel like Zelda is the most realistic, well-rounded, fully fleshed-out, and fully explored person I’ve played,” says Ricci. “Also, I’ve never played a romantic lead — ever.” She continues, “Zelda was someone intelligent enough to see through facades. She didn’t have a lot of self-control and burst a lot of bubbles. She was a very self-aware young person, in the middle of this world, not from this world, who was able to judge it. Maybe she didn’t always have the best time, because she didn’t buy into the bullshit. She was smart enough to know when people were full of shit.”

For Ricci fans, this may sound familiar. “I related to it, so I was certainly able to put my perspective on things,” she says. “I think probably because I was a child in a very surreal world, I try to find the normalcy in everything in life, in every situation. Where’s the human thing amid the craziness?”

She specifically related to Zelda’s mental state. “When I was younger I thought that at a certain point I was going to have a nervous breakdown,” says Ricci. “I really thought that was part of life, because every woman I read about was put away at some point because they were too difficult to deal with. I was like, Oh, gosh, so at 40 I’m going to have to go away. Even my grandmother had nervous breakdowns and was put in asylums. I think it’s just how they dealt with difficult women back then.”

There’s the old Ricci, that beloved renegade. And although she rues those impish interviews of her youth — “They were hilarious, but so ridiculous, and I paid a price for them” — she doesn’t regret her long-standing, almost genetic tendency to rock the boat. “I’ve always considered gay men to be my people,” she says. “I’m very upfront and unapologetic, and I find that’s what gay people respond to. I think that’s something that’s appealing for people who’ve had to fight really hard to be who they are. And I just can’t be any other way.”   

Like what you see here? Subscribe and be the first to receive the latest issue of Out. Subscribe to print here and receive a complimentary digital subscription.

Rough Night may be a calculated cross between Weekend at Bernie’s and Bridesmaids, but it may also be the first movie to center on a hunky male corpse. The summer comedy—starring Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon and Ilana Glazer—follows a bachelorette party that goes awry when one girl accidentally kills a hired male stripper.

That unfortunate soul is Ryan Cooper, a 31-year-old Australian actor and ex-model who spends most of the film in skivvies, being propped up and occasionally molested. “There was definitely an introduction to bodily awkwardness,” says Cooper.

In one memorable scene, he and McKinnon make out on a beach. “Well, if me passively lying there while she goes nuts on my face is classified as making out, yes,” says Cooper, adding that the trick to playing dead is meditation. Still, it wasn’t easy. “I had crabs coming out of the sand biting my back and Kate on top of me whispering and tickling me. It was very, very hard to remain composed.”

So did he have any problem being (literally) objectified? “You know what? I think sex has been exploited a lot on both sides of the fence, male and female,” Cooper says. “This is the girls getting back at us.”

Like what you see here? Subscribe and be the first to receive the latest issue of Out. Subscribe to print here and receive a complimentary digital subscription.

Rough Night Star Ryan Cooper on Playing a Sexy Slain Stripper

Rough Night Star Ryan Cooper on Playing a Sexy Slain Stripper

Mindhunter is slated to debut on Friday, October 13. 

Jonathan Groff may be the closest thing we have to a life-size teddy bear, but this month the Looking actor goes from snuggly to super dark.

In David Fincher’s Netflix thriller, Mindhunter, Groff plays Holden Ford, a 1970s investigator who pioneers the method of criminal profiling, matching wits with members of a newly named criminal subclass: the serial killer.

“Now it’s pretty much the whole FBI, but back then behavioral science was a small part of the agency,” says Groff. “This is about the revelation that serial killers were something worth looking at instead of locking up for life and ignoring.”

Embodying a role in which he had to scrutinize murderous minds was as intense as it sounds. “A lot of the show’s stars come from theater,” says Groff, an alum of Hamilton and Spring Awakening.“And the amount of time David Fincher spent crafting each moment reminds me of theater. I’ve never worked harder in my life.”

Mindhunter is slated to debut on Netflix Friday, October. 13. 

The At Home With Amy Sedaris star talks crafting, cooking & her biggest dinner-party disaster. 

Amy Sedaris' At Home With Amy Sedaris is a loopy new showcase for the avid crafter and hostess—like someone threw Martha Stewart and Pee-wee Herman in a blender. With the truTV series, out this week, expect handmade projects, bizarro recipes, and guests like Stephen Colbert and Jane Krakowski offering both laughs and legit advice. Says the former Strangers With Candy star, “You want people to play it straight and hope that comedy comes out.”

OUT: It seems you were destined to do this show.

Amy Sedaris: I’ve always been into crafting, and I like to keep my house nice. Growing up, we had two terrible homemaking shows—crazy women in their “homes,” which were actually sets. They’d have locals on, and it was unbelievably boring. But I always said, “I’m going to do that someday.”

What’s your favorite vintage recipe name?

I always liked my brother’s Chicken Snatchiatore, instead of chicken cacciatore.

How is that made?

Oh, it’s the same recipe. You can just call it Chicken Snatchiatore.

How do you compare to Martha Stewart?

My references were more The Galloping Gourmet, The Frugal Gourmet, Two Fat Ladies, and Julia Child—that quiet PBS feel. But what was good about Martha is that she broke her show into segments: “Here’s cooking! Here’s crafting!”

What was your biggest dinner-party disaster?

Once I had a party, and 20 minutes before people were due to arrive, my super came up and said he had to remove my toilet. He put it in my bathtub, so if anyone had to use the bathroom, they couldn’t. And one night before Thanksgiving I was trying to defrost my freezer and I punctured something and the Freon went in my face. But luckily it was Chicago in November, so I just put everything on my back porch.

The key is keeping calm.

You can only control so much. That’s why it’s important who you invite. I got some good advice once: Take a picture of the disaster and laugh about it later.

What’s your least favorite homemaking trend?

I don’t like “DIY” or “quick fixes”—like “Print this out and tack this up!” Or shows with any kind of “challenge.”

Well, you make things look really easy.

I always say, “Surround yourself with what you like.” People say, “I’m not going to paint this wall because I’m renting and not going to be here for 20 years.” Just fuckin’ paint the wall! You’re not going to get your deposit back anyway.

Collaborator Par Excellence

Beck, writer/producer of her 2010 album, 'IRM'

Serge Gainsbourg, her dad and duet partner on the scandalous 1984 single 'Lemon Incest'

SebastiAn, producer on 'Rest'

Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, writer/producer of 'Rest'

Paul McCartney, writer of 'Songbird in a Cage'

Lars von Trier, her director for 'Antichrist,' 'Melancholia,' and 'Nymphomaniac'

With the release of her new album, Rest, the French singer-actress discusses working with Beck, Paul McCartney & SebastiAn.

Dark maestro Alan Ball's new series is heavy on family discord, Holly Hunter, and gay sex.

Projects involving Holly Hunter or writer-producer Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood) always demand attention, but put them together and viewing is practically compulsory. Luckily, HBO’s Here and Now, created by Ball and starring the actress, won’t disappoint. The story of a multiracial family that’s slowly unraveling, the series casts Hunter and Tim Robbins as the parents of four grown children, three of whom were adopted from Colombia, Vietnam, and Senegal.

The Portland-based brood begins to fray when gay son Ramon (Daniel Zovatto) starts seeing things that aren’t really there. Mom is losing it; Dad is juggling depression and a mistress; and the hour-long pilot isn’t half over before foxy Ramon is rolling around naked with his equally comely love interest. The episode sets up the show as exceptionally promising. Hunter gives her character an immediate richness, Robbins gets a Six Feet–style philosophical monologue about aging, and Ramon introduces his boyfriend to his mother with the line “We put our dicks in each other.” Trust us: This is a crew you’ll want to hang with.

Here and Now Brings Multiracial Gay Drama to HBO

Here and Now Brings Multiracial Gay Drama to HBO

We're highlighting 50 years of queer classics this week, as seen in "Songs in the Key of Pride" in the June/July issue. Here, we're bringing it back to 1998 with Rufas Wainwright.

In 1998, a wiry 24-year-old newcomer named Rufus Wainwright unveiled his witty, piano-based, self-titled debut album. With its Cole Porter–esque stylings, it was a risk, as was his choice to be out of the closet when he released it, but he ended up with a hit that would launch his career. Twenty years, eight studio albums, and two operas later, he looks back. 

Related | 13 Trailblazing Queer Musicians Shaking Up Our Summer 

What would you tell that kid who set out to record Rufus Wainwright 20 years ago?
I wouldn’t change one aspect. In terms of what I chose to do in the studio and my songwriting, I was spot-on. Except for maybe my visual presentation. I didn’t really start working out until I was 30.

Do you wish you were more buff in your videos?
I mean, I was a very attractive young man. If I’d played the game a bit more, I could have really gone with that. But I was so concentrated on the music. It was probably time better spent than going to the gym.

Did you feel pressure from your record company not to come out?
Well, at first they wanted me to pretend I was bisexual, but I just have to be me. I was arguably the first-ever artist out from the get-go who sang about his love affairs with men for a major label, and I got a real push.

Where did you get that courage? Or did you just not care?
It was two sides of the sword. One was extreme confidence, desire, and ambition — the things imbued within me by my mother. But the other was fear of not being sure if I’d survive the AIDS epidemic. I thought, I have to be as real and truthful as possible, because I was faced with such darkness. There was no time to play around.

You were accepted by other musicians immediately: Gwen Stefani was in your first video, for “April Fools.”
After Napster, the industry was no longer designed to support artists, so I think some people tried to give me a hand, because they knew that otherwise I would just get lost.

Don't miss Rufus Wainwright's North American tour to coincide with the 20th anniversary of his debut. "All Of These Poses Anniversary Tour 2018" kicks off in Los Angeles on November 9. Click here for ticket information. 

1998: When Modern-Day Troubadour and Queer Pioneer Rufus Wainwright Emerged

We caught up with the comedian in honor of his new NYC show, What Is This?

A funny thing happened to one of comedy's most incisive depressives, a man so dedicated to inner anomie that toured with a show called Numb: He got happy. British comedian Simon Amstell is a longtime fixture of UK television — via the sitcom Grandma's House and game shows like Never Mind the Buzzcocks— and occasionally graces our shores with hilarious, incisive stand-up shows. In his new show What Is This? and book Help, Amstell talks about how he got over himself and got a boyfriend. The relationship has lasted seven years, and Amstell dives into what made that possible: Basically, get a shaman, tell each other everything and attend the occasional orgy. The message: If he managed to do it, you can too. (Not really. But it's a nice thought, right?)

Some writeups of the show include the sentence, "Simon Amstell drank ayuehasca and it cured his depression." Was that the key?

I went into an ayahuasca ceremony in Peru with that depression, and I came out having gotten to what seemed to be the roots of all my anxiety and depression, and I felt much stronger and somehow reset.  

I think I'm going to try that, because I'm incredibly depressed.

It's quite an extreme thing to do. You really have to feel it calling to you. I kept hearing the word: ayahuasca, ayahuasca. My boyfriend said, "I keep hearing the word 'skiing.'"

Have you done other substances?

I had some magic mushrooms many years ago, and I think after that I became permanently funnier. Which has been an incredibly good for society. So we should look into how we can use these medicines, rather than throwing them all together as "dangerous" or "evil."

So you've been together for almost seven years now. What came first, the depression lifting or the boyfriend?

They happened at about the same time. It's not a controlled experiment. However, my hunch is if I hadn't have gone to Peru, the relationship wouldn't still be a thing that's happening. I think I probably would have made mistakes over and over again. I did meet someone so incredible that he would've been very good about me being deranged, but ultimately it wouldn't have lasted as long as it had.

What's the trick to making it last?

Talking about everything that feels scary to talk about. And we're not lying to each other. There's no deception going on. Everything that needs to be discussed ends up being discussed. It sometimes takes a minute, but eventually the truth comes out.

I loved your bit about attending a hipster sex party in Los Angeles together. It's refreshing to hear about these things, because a lot of couples are struggling with monogamy and sexual boundaries right now.

Yeah, we settled on something that was quite specific to us. I think once you come out, and you've been in a place where it's tricky to come out, that's so subversive in itself that the idea that you would then conform to any other convention expected of you is a little silly to me.

As you say, ultimately we're all perverts.

Right.

What other projects are you working on?

I'm wrapping the edit on a feature film called Benjamin. It's about a young man desperately seeking love from an audience, when what he really needs is to experience the intimacy of a relationship with one person in his life. Wild imagination I've got.

What Is This? runs through June 30 at Theatre 80 in New York City. His new book,Help, is very funny too.

Simon Amstell Got Over Himself, Got a Boyfriend, & Now Has a New Comedy Show

She digs into Trump Voters and tackles her blackness, gayness, and divorce—what more could you ask for? 

Prediction: Sam Jay will go down in stand-up history alongside Margaret Cho, Wanda Sykes, and Joan Rivers. Like those trailblazers, Jay is as profane as she is wise, digging into the psychology of Nazis, ass-eaters, and Trump voters while tackling her blackness, gayness, and divorce. After a season at SNL (she co-wrote “Black Jeopardy”), she’s just released her album Donna’s Daughter and appears on the Netflix special The Comedy Lineup. 

Related | Hannah Gadsby's Nanette Is a Sea Change for LGBT Comedy

I loved your bit on sex acts that are a little too gay for you — like scissoring.
I’m not trying to speak as a gay woman— just as a person who’s feeling things.

In a bit about your divorce, you state that maybe gay people shouldn’t be married because it’s part of a straight institution.
We used to define our unions for ourselves. Now we’re defining them according to straight standards. We just wanted the right to be seen with the people we love. And get the tax break!

Do you worry about being misconstrued?
I get more shit when I do gay venues than when I do “for everyone” shows. I think as gay people we are so worried about our image that we’re not chilling. We’re not free to just kid.

You psychologize old, white, male Trump voters perfectly: They just want to feel they’ve contributed something.
No one wants to feel like what they’ve brought to the table was bad. There’s got to be a middle. We’ve all got to live here. You can’t have progress and leave people behind.

Today, a Joan Rivers might be Twitter-mobbed out of the industry. Can you help restore the appetite for improper humor?
As a society we feel like we can’t have two separate emotions about one thing. But you can laugh at this stuff, and laughing at it doesn’t negate its seriousness.

Sam Jay Is Ready to Bring Back Comedy's Edge

From Muriel’s Wedding to Hearts Beat Loud, this Aussie star is thankful for the music.

Toni Collette has held a firm place in our hearts — and given us karaoke goals — since her  debut as gawky ABBA fangirl Muriel in 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding. This summer, The Aussie actress returned to horror (The Sixth Sense, anyone?) with Hereditaryand got tuneful again in the queer-themed indie Hearts Beat Loud. Here, Collette dishes on music, her homeland, and Muriel’s lasting appeal.

Related | Hearts Beat Loud is the Year's Wokest Feel-Good Fairy Tale

What are your thoughts on 1994’s Australian film explosion, with Muriel’s Wedding and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert?
Those two films and Strictly Ballroom came flying out of the country in a very short period of time. It was exciting. I think those things are determined by the filmmakers. That’s what creates the wave. I don’t know if it’s happened since.

What do you remember about the reception of Muriel’s Wedding in America, and the splash you made as an actress?
I felt so alive and appreciative. It was such a surprise when people embraced that character. The movie was life-changing — it helped me embark on a career I never could have dreamed of.

Do you think the success of Muriel and Priscilla made it easier for American filmmakers to do more queer-targeted films?
Priscilla certainly did. It was so fun, but not without depth and poignancy. I don’t know if it opened doors for other films, but when something like that is available to people, it must.

In Hearts Beat Loud, the two romances involve a middle-aged straight couple and queer teen girls. It’s rare to see screen romances that aren’t straight people in their 20s.
I loved that there was no fuss made about that. And the daughter is black and no fuss was made. It’s just people living their lives. None of those questions were ever important, and that’s the way life should be.

And you get to sing karaoke in the film!
Yes! I started acting through singing. As a teenager, I did musicals. But the last musical I did was The Wild Party on Broadway in 2000. I’d like to do more of it, but I’ve been pretty busy with my day job!

Any future music plans?
I’m always singing. You can’t shut me up. My husband’s a musician and we talk about doing something again — we put out an album 12 years ago. And I write things, but only for myself. I can’t imagine life without music.

Finally, what is a must-do in Australia for anyone reading this?
I would do the Bondi-to-Bronte walk along the cliffs in Sydney. And jump in the ocean whenever possible.

Why We'll Always Be Head Over Heels for Toni Collette

The queer trailblazer is taking on her biggest performance yet in The Hate U Give.

“There’s power in just professing who you are,” says Amandla Stenberg. She should know: The 19-year-old veteran of The Hunger Games has vaulted to the front of the new queer guard, thanks to her willingness to influence and move the discussion about identity forward, both in her personal life and in three new riveting film projects.

Stenberg came out as bisexual on Teen Vogue’s Snapchat in 2016, and clarified things this summer in Wonderland magazine: “I was so overcome with this profound sense of relief when I realized that I’m gay — not bi, not pan, but gay — with a romantic love for women,” she said.

All clothing by Louis Vuitton.

Just a few years ago, that kind of candor would have been unthinkable for a teen at the beginning of her career. But for Stenberg, it was non-negotiable. “I can’t live an existence where I’m not myself,” she says. “Life is too short. It’s just kind of a coincidence that my identity happens to be controversial when it comes to how the institution of Hollywood has generally run. But I just have to be who I am, and I feel like when you speak it out into the world, you make it a lot easier to actualize it in yourself. Had I not been open about who I am, I wouldn’t have been able to find the pride and the joy in it that I feel now.”

Related | Cover Exclusive: The Faces of Fall (Gallery)

Stenberg is a member of a new breed of LGBTQ influencers: Multihyphenate kids coming out early, building big followings, and using their various platforms to advance change. At the same time that she’s stepping up as a major role model, she’s taking on her biggest performance yet.

In director George Tillman Jr.’s The Hate U Give, Stenberg plays Starr Carter, an ambitious high schooler who witnesses her childhood friend, a gang member, get shot and killed by police. In the wake of the tragedy, she faces enormous pressure to stay quiet — to preserve her status at an affluent, mostly white private school, and to prevent gang retribution on her family.   

Stenberg’s performance is stunningly assured, with the intensity and confidence of a champion marathoner: She is in every scene of the two-hour film. Not since Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone has an actress so young been called upon to carry a contemporary drama, and she more than pulls it off.

She developed the project (which also stars Issa Rae and Regina Hall) for two years, after she read the young-adult book on which it was based. “Growing up, I had a really similar experience to Starr, in having to navigate code switching between different environments,” says Stenberg, who grew up in South Los Angeles. “I think it’s really reflective of the present-day black experience — the code switching to fit into institutions that we haven’t historically been allowed into. So we’ve learned dual language in order to survive.”

That’s also a major reason why the film should resonate with an LGBTQ audience, regardless of their backgrounds. It’s that sense of universality that gave Stenberg the courage to come out. “I think what was most important to me — what had an effect on my feeling comfortable in the world — was being able to find community in the internet,” she says. “I feel like that has really revolutionized how you conceptualize yourself, because you realize you aren’t alone. You can see hundreds and hundreds of representations of yourself on the internet and realize that even if you might be in your respective cities or towns that you exist and live a parallel experience with someone else.”

Stenberg’s other fall film, Where Hands Touch, is the story of biracial children affected by the Holocaust; she plays a girl who falls in love with the son of a prominent Nazi officer. “Not a lot of people know about these kids,” she says. “They were the children of German women and French Senegalese soldiers who had had affairs during World War I, and they were coming of age right as the Holocaust was happening.”And she also starred in this summer’s Darkest Minds, from the producers of Stranger Things and Arrival, a movie based on a book series about a world in which 98 percent of children have been killed by a mysterious disease; those left behind have developed supernatural powers and are imprisoned by fearful adults. Stenberg plays a girl who escapes from a prison camp and joins forces with other escapees. “They kind of become a family as they band together to fight against the regime of the government that they’re living under,” she says. “It’s mostly a really fun ride.”

So far, her bankability isn’t an issue. Did she worry about it before coming out? “I did contemplate it at first,” she says. “I think I did have, and sometimes I still do have, reservations around how I should proceed. But at the same time, I feel like I have this platform, and if I don’t use it as a tool to do something greater, then I don’t really know what the point of it would be, you know? It wouldn’t really mean anything.

She continues, “What you’re seeing in Hollywood, I think, is a lot of studios and producers and filmmakers realizing that they need to cater to what interests our generation, and most of that is based on some sort of activism or interest in progressing our society, which is really beautiful. I think they’re realizing that it helps them monetarily, and keeps them relevant. If they don’t make that kind of content, audiences won’t be interested in what they have to say.”

Photography by John Russo. Styling by Nicolas Klam. Groomer: AJ Juttla. 

Cover Exclusive: Amandla Stenberg Hits New Heights In Acting and Activism

Dark maestro Alan Ball's new series is heavy on family discord, Holly Hunter, and gay sex.

Projects involving Holly Hunter or writer-producer Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood) always demand attention, but put them together and viewing is practically compulsory. Luckily, HBO’s Here and Now, created by Ball and starring the actress, won’t disappoint. The story of a multiracial family that’s slowly unraveling, the series casts Hunter and Tim Robbins as the parents of four grown children, three of whom were adopted from Colombia, Vietnam, and Senegal.

The Portland-based brood begins to fray when gay son Ramon (Daniel Zovatto) starts seeing things that aren’t really there. Mom is losing it; Dad is juggling depression and a mistress; and the hour-long pilot isn’t half over before foxy Ramon is rolling around naked with his equally comely love interest. The episode sets up the show as exceptionally promising. Hunter gives her character an immediate richness, Robbins gets a Six Feet–style philosophical monologue about aging, and Ramon introduces his boyfriend to his mother with the line “We put our dicks in each other.” Trust us: This is a crew you’ll want to hang with.

Here and Now Brings Multiracial Gay Drama to HBO

Here and Now Brings Multiracial Gay Drama to HBO