Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman is an other.
He’s a biracial, queer man who was adopted and raised in a teeny-tiny town in Alberta, Canada, where he was the only person of color. So yeah, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman stood out.
“I was the other. I was different than everybody else around me and I was told what I was,” Bowyer-Chapman says. “I was told that I am a black male. I was told that I am gay before I even had a language for it for myself.”
Growing up, the Unreal actor says, he was a target. He didn’t see himself in the media (with regard to race or sexual orientation) until he was in his 20s. And this lack of representation informed his decisions as an actor and the path that he’s chosen to walk.
“I think it’s so important to provide a platform for others to tell their own stories,” he told The Root.
Enter his new podcast, Conversations With Others. This podcast will get your chakras all the way aligned—think Super Soul Sunday with your gay play cousin. And throw in a kiki for good measure.
But the reason Bowyer-Chapman resonates in his podcast and on-screen is that he is completely authentic. “I’m just myself. I don’t dilute myself or parts of myself in order to make it more palatable or easier for a heteronormative audience to accept or to digest. I’m just me,” Bowyer-Chapman told The Root.
See the entire video above.