National Student Pride's ambassador Evan Davis guest hosts the show and interviews LGBT+ Icon Ian McKellen on the #StudentPride podcast at National Student Pride 2019.
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Evan Davis interviewed Ian McKellen on the #QueerAF podcast at National Student Pride 2019 at the University of Westminster, discussing his lifetime achievements and relationship with the LGBT community.
They spoke about #MeToo, chemsex, drugs, his coming out, the #MeToo movement and empowered the young LGBT+ audience.
The event took place on February 23rd at the non-profit organizations, now five-year-long residency, Westminster Marylebone campus.
Davis and McKellen hosted a live-stream of #QueerAF the National Student Pride podcast.
In conversation, McKellen proposed to Evan Davis they speak about chemsex. Otherwise known as getting high and horny or party and play โ those who take part in chemsex do so to change the sex they are having with a so-called โholy trinityโ of drugs.
McKellen spoke about when he first tried a joint at the age of 30, with Evan Davis adding that โdrugs were much weaker back thenโ.
The audience at National Student Pride were enthralled by Ian with his re-tellings of his pursuits to join the theatre as โone of the reasons I became a professional actor is because I learned that I could meet queers in the British theatreโ and admitting โI just wish when I was younger I could have been myselfโ.
McKellen got many a laugh with his unrelenting wit, gesticulating at one point about โdrawings of genitalia in public bathroomsโ.
The conversation also looked at various aspects of McKellen's life:
- His coming out story
- How Margaret Thatcherโs Section 28 Law made him the activist he is today and how the queer scene in the theatre was what first attracted him to the profession
- His advice to young LGBT+ students
- Holding Elijah Woodโs hand while he got a tattoo during the filming of Lord of the Rings
- The #MeToo movement
On Me Too he says:
'Well frankly, Iโm waiting for someone to accuse me of something, and me wondering whether theyโre not telling the truth and me having forgotten (pointing to his head) you know.
But with the couple of names youโve mention, people Iโve worked with, both of them were in the closet. And hence all their problems as people and their relationships with other people, if they had been able to be open about themselves and their desires, they wouldnโt have started abusing people in the way theyโve been accused.
Whether they should be forced to stop working. Thatโs debatable. I rather think thatโs up to the public. Do you want to see someone who has been accused of something that you donโt approve of again? If the answerโs no, then you wonโt buy a ticket, you wonโt turn on the television. But there may be others for who thatโs not a consideration.
And itโs difficult to be exactly black and white.'
He has since released this statement about the comments: https://twitter.com/IanMcKellen/status/1101741037083455488
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