News June 02, 2022
Aunjanue Ellis Discusses Being Publicly Open About Her Sexual Orientation
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Aunjanue Ellis is opening up about her sexuality.
In an interview with Variety published Wednesday, the “King Richard” actress said she is “very clear about being bisexual” despite “nobody” asking about her sexual orientation.
“How do you work that into the conversation, in the middle of me talking about this movie?” the Oscar nominee shared. “I’m not that chick. My job was to talk about ‘King Richard,’ the [family of Serena and Venus Williams], these wonderful young women I worked with, [co-star] Will Smith’s incredible work in that movie. I wasn’t going to be like, ‘And by the way, in case you ain’t heard yet…’ Because that’s artificial.”
In fact, in March, Ellis attended the Essence Black Women in Hollywood Awards wearing a red Dolce & Gabbana suit jacket with the word “Queer” written in rhinestones on the sleeve.
“I was thinking, ‘Why didn’t more people pay attention to that?’ And I was like, they probably thought it said ‘Queen,’“ she revealed. “It wasn’t that I was expecting any sort of major reaction or anything like that. One of my family members noticed, but nobody else did.”
Though Ellis believes there are assumptions made about her — “Is it because I’m a Black woman from Mississippi? Is it because I’m older?” — she declares, “I am Black, I am queer. This is who I am.”
“The way that I live my life, around the people that I live my life around, I am public about it,” she added. “I’m very clear about being bisexual. I have a sweatshirt that says ‘Girl Bi’ that I wear everywhere.”
Despite her openness, Ellis revealed she faced difficulties navigating her sexuality when she was younger.
“The solitude of that is so lonely, it’s violent,” she explained. “It’s violent because you literally have to tuck and place so many parts of you to be acceptable, so people won’t run from you and don’t want to be around you. It was exhausting. That’s what childhood was like. That’s what adolescence was like.”
She continued, “I knew [my sexuality], but there was no template for it; there was no example of it; there was no place for it, and certainly no forgiveness for it.”
These days, Ellis is a vocal champion for Black queer women and urges the entertainment industry to include more of their stories across all media.
“There aren’t a lot of novels about Black queer women,” she said. “There are characters, but the full experience of a Black woman being gay or bisexual, it doesn’t exist, so we’ve got to write it into existence.”
