Acceptance at home is fundamental, yes, but frankly, it's just not enough. Trans youth, like most young people, spend the majority of their time at school. If you spent Monday to Friday from 8 to 3 being told that you weren't okay, that you were wrong, how are you meant to think otherwise?
I think the most important thing that young people should be taught at school is how they can decide what they're being told is true.
If I were to just focus on stand-up, I could actually, paradoxically enough, be home way more, because I would leave on a Friday, go do a couple theaters Friday, Saturday, maybe Sunday, come home.
I actually think the whole concept of retirement is a bit stupid, so yes, I do want to do something else. There is this strange thing that just because chronologically on a Friday night you have reached a certain age... with all that experience, how can it be that on a Monday morning, you are useless?
I used to spend a lot of time at football training, but that time was later spent in amateur acting classes and my local youth theatre, in plays at school and after-school clubs. That filled the void.
I like to spend time with my family. The majority of my time is spent in London, but I do like to escape and spend time with them in my hometown of Brighton on the south coast.
I absolutely loathe and hate the work... But I love youth. I realise how lucky it is being with youth, and what an honour that is. Nowhere else could a fat 47-year-old speak to people as young as this. They'd think you were a paedophile.
People seem to think that they can't come up with ideas, and they're wrong. They can and they do, but they just think of it as daydreaming, or wasting time. Kids get told not to make things up, and in my case, nobody told me long enough, or it just didn't stick.
Don't equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don't let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you'd like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.
When I see a lot of young faces in the audience, it's just sort of sinking in how important that is. Because you're old enough now to identify them very strongly as being young - whereas before, of course they were young, because you were young. Now it's not like that.
I had been brought up in an elementary school where, my first few grades, I remember being specifically told that my teachers were gay. I was just that age and that was just how it was, and my parents were very... You know, that's how I was raised. Like super-progressive.
I think the part of media that romanticizes criminal behavior, things that a person will say against women, profanity, being gangster, having multiple children with multiple men and women and not wanting to is prevalent. When you look at the majority of shows on television they placate that kind of behavior. If you go through a weekly Monday through Friday, it's all there. It's in how people on the sitcoms and cop shows talk to each other.
I am happy being a man in a dress. Some people get confused and think I'm a trans woman, but I'm strict about the difference. What I do is performance, it's staged, it's glamour - it's not real life. But for trans people, being born in the wrong body - there's nothing glamorous or easy about that.
People assume that trans people will only be accepted as trans characters, or that there aren't enough trans writers, or that there aren't any trans producers or directors, there's that attitude.
I like to play video games, I like to keep up with sports, and I just like to spend time with people, because I'm on the road so much that when I'm home, I like to spend time with people that I don't normally get to see.
How are people who are young and look like Oscar [Grant] portrayed in the media? You gotta think about that. And somebody given a badge and a gun and told to go police in those communities, all of a sudden they got to protect and serve and talk to people they never even spent time with [and] they might have formed opinions about.
I spent my entire youth being in love with gay men because they were the most interesting and compassionate people I knew.