Generation Hope! Todrick Hall leads the LGBT fightback in Attitude’s May issue
By Will Stroude
Since rising to fame on the sixth season of American Idol in 2009, Todrick Hall has got used to letting people hear his voice.
Now, the all-singing, all-dancing Broadway and YouTube star is using it to help fight against growing hatred and division, urging the LGBT to come together and bite back against the dark forces of Donald Trump.
Todrick is one of three ‘Generation Hope’ stars to appear on the cover of Attitude’s May issue – available to download and in shops now – which celebrates the new generation of LGBT activists providing a much-needed counterpoint to an increasingly fearful world.
For 31-year-old Todrick, the fightback begins with ending what he sees as a tendency for the LGBT+ community not to congratulate itself, and even to attack its own.
“We’re a very competitive community sometimes. I feel the same way about the African-American community, I can come out with a video and it seems as if I get the most hate online from other African-Americans or other gay people,” he says.
“We’ve had to fight so hard to get our rights that I don’t like the fact that the closest to being straight is so praised, or that there is racism in the gay community. I think it’s really important to lift each other up.”
Hall has become renowned online for his fierce, hilarious and inclusive reinventions of Disney classics, and the RuPaul‘s Drag Race judge also reveals how art and film provided him with his own safe space as a young gay kid growing up in rural Texas.
“Films were my only outlet to know what theatre was, how these people could conquer challenges and make anything happen,” he recalls.
“I always identified with Dorothy Gale from Kansas who wanted to go somewhere colourful, or Ariel who was this half-fish, half-human who wanted to see the world differently, or this random village girl who is the person to see beauty in a beast.”
The May issue of Attitude is out now. To buy in print click here, or subscribe at subscribeme.to/attitude. To buy a digital copy, visit pocketmags.com/attitude.
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