Justice Smith isn’t here for outdated Hollywood norms.
In a new interview with Men’s Health, the Genera+ion star opened up about navigating the entertainment industry as an openly LGBTQ+ actor and shared that he has never regretted his decision to come out as queer last year.
“It took me 0.05 seconds before I [shared my sexuality publicly] to be like, ‘What if this affects my career?’” Smith told the men’s magazine. “And just as quickly, I was like, ‘I wouldn’t want a career in which I couldn’t be myself.’ I would never accept a career in which they were like, ‘You can be an actor, but you can’t be Black.’ That would be fucking crazy to me. If this prevents me from getting opportunities then I never wanted those opportunities. Those opportunities were never formed because this is how I was made. This is who I am. Period.”
Smith, who rose to fame through his roles in Netflix’s The Get Down and All the Bright Places, came out as queer amid last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. (Although he’s not a huge fan of the phrase “coming out,” previously telling GQ, “I did not ever put myself in [this socially-constructed closet] to begin with.”) Last June, the actor posted a since-deleted video on Instagram alongside his partner at the time, actor Nicholas Ashe, advocating for queer and trans inclusion in the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We chanted ‘Black Trans Lives Matter,’ ‘Black Queer Lives Matter,’ [and] ‘All Black Lives Matter,’” Smith said of his protest experience. “As a Black queer man myself, I was disappointed to see certain people eager to say ‘Black Lives Matter,’ but hold their tongue when ‘Trans’ [or] ‘Queer’ was added.”
The actor went on to add that any movement that excludes Black queer voices is inherently anti-Black. “It is in our conditioning to get as close to whiteness, straightness, maleness as we can because that’s where the power is,” he continued. “But the revolution is not about appeal. It is about demanding what should have been given to us from the beginning.”
Since publicly “coming in,” Smith has had the opportunity to portray an iconic Black queer character: Chester on Genera+ion. The HBO Max series follows several queer Gen Z teens as they navigate their conservative California hometown, dealing with all the identity crises and awkward flings that come with growing up.
So far, Smith’s character has been the heart of the show. Chester is a proudly gay and mega-popular water polo player who has a memorable “getting ready” montage set to Britney Spears’ underrated ballad “Lucky” — and who is also on the cusp of a love triangle with two boys from his school. The series was created by actual teenager Zelda Barnz and her dads Daniel and Ben. (Finally a juicy teen drama for gays, by gays.)
“For so long, queer people have had to try and find their representation in straight material,” Smith told The Daily Beast in March. “ And, like, now it’s kind of the other way around.”
The actor, who also grew up Black and queer in Southern California, told Men’s Health that Chester has been “a godsend in so many ways.”
“Chester was the first character that wore his heart on his sleeve and was the first provocative, extroverted character that I played,” he said.
“I knew that I had all of those sides within me, and as an artist, this is the perfect chance to showcase that,” he added. “I’m not just an introverted, sad boy, nerdy-type which I play a lot of; I also do other things.”
When it comes to achieving justice in Hollywood, though, Smith joked that the industry will be a better place when the same opportunities that are freely handed out to mediocre white creators are given to everyone.
“True equity is the day where Black and queer artists who aren’t very good are gaining success and becoming very popular because that’s what we have with some white artists,” he said. “Black people have to be excellent, and we have to be the chosen few just to get a crumb of what they have. True equity is the day we see Black artists who are kind of mediocre getting their coin and making bank.”
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