We recently connected with Jonathan Slavin and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jonathan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?

I deliberately chose this topic as a queer person who has been in the entertainment industry for 34 years. So much of my early career was spent being asked to obfuscate my queerness, to gentrify and straighten myself. My representation, the people who were supposed to be working with me and believing in me, would call me or, worse, bring me into the office to discuss the liability that my queerness was to me, and therefore, to them. My first California agent literally said to me “we are concerned that you are just too gay for los Angeles, and should maybe consider moving back to New York”. My longtime(now ex)manager used to send me into auditions telling me “if they get that you’re gay, its over”. And the result of all of this was I was trying to do my job with about a quarter of the tools I had, as every other implement I should have working with was either deemed “too queer” or was being utilized to somehow make me “less light”. And then, at some point, I stopped. I was just exhausted and not having the success I wanted. When you are less light, you are, simply, darker. So I started letting my big flaming rainbow light shine, and I never stopped. And that is when my career took off. People will tell you that your differences are a detriment, that marketability demands a certain sameness. My experience is that we all need to occupy our own space, one that not only accommodates but celebrates our uniqueness. I often tell my students “Van Gogh didn’t paint the sunflower he thought they wanted, he painted the sunflower he saw.” I paint my damn sunflower. No matter what.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I actually want to answer this as a teacher, rather than as a writer or an actor. I sort of stumbled into teaching and coaching, working with my friends, helping people prep for their auditions, and what I saw over and over again was actors attempting to contort themselves into emotional pretzels trying to magically transform themselves into character breakdowns, in a desperate endeavor to become what some rather nebulous “they” were looking for. Because I approach everything from a queer perspective, that stopped being an option for me, and rather than bend myself to fit the material, I always bend the material to fit me. I make my work, my scene, my audition, whatever, into something I love, something I’m excited about, something that feels like me expressing myself as an artist. And as a teacher, that’s what I strive to convey to my students. So many actors come to me from other programs and professors, desperately trying to get it “right”. And I make them stop that and instead of trying to find “the right way to do the scene” I work with them on finding their way to do the scene. Something uniquely and magically and joyfully theirs. And I’m really proud of the work that they have accomplished.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Shuffle priorities. I know I will sound 100 years old saying that, and, I sort of am, but one of the bleakest things that can happen to a creative ecosystem is homogenization. We are, unfortunately becoming a world where, it can seem, in order to be successful you have to fit a certain mold, look a certain way, be a certain shape or size, act a certain way. I wish sometimes that society would look around and see how truly beautifully diverse the world around them is, and demand that the creativity they consume reflect that true diversity.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I mean, listen, again, I’m 100 years old, but when I grew up, there was no one on tv that represented me, that owned their sexuality and gender identity in a way that wasn’t a device for gross comedy or overwrought tragedy. And so my mission, is always, always, always, to represent for the queer folks out there, to nurture, elevate and protect queer voices, and to do everything I can with my work and/or my visibility to keep this world from spinning backwards.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: slavin_jonathan
• Twitter: slavin_jonathan

Image Credits
Vince Trupsin