By Daniel Reynolds
Jeremy Pope is the cover story of the new Pride issue of Out magazine. In it, the Emmy-nominated actor (Hollywood, Pose) discussed his journey of coming out as a Black gay man in the entertainment industry and beyond.

**PHOTOGRAPHY BY SOPHIE CHAN ANDREASSEND**

“There’s just a tricky way in which you have to move, especially in an industry that is predominantly white,” says Pope.

“Black men, I feel like a lot of times, our masculinity is our armor,” he says. “We’re meant to be built strong and tough because we’ve had to endure so much. So when you tell someone that you’re gay or you’re queer or you identify within the community, it’s like, do you lose that badge of honor? Do you lose that respect? Do you lose your safety because people feel like you’re vulnerable or you’re fragile?”

Additionally, Pope’s father, a pastor, is “extremely hypermasculine,” he shares, but the pair had a close bond. “I didn’t want to lose that dynamic,” he says of his early coming-out fears.

“I watched so many of my cousins and a lot of my Black friends maybe not have a relationship with their father.” There was also the church community to consider. “There’s an image that you have to uphold,” Pope says, adding, “You feel like you can’t make mistakes, because you are the example. You are the first family, especially in the Black community — what everyone is striving to essentially be, or your relationship to God is supposed to feel the closest.” Happily, he is he now closer than ever to his family after coming out.

Pope also self-directed his gender-fluid photoshoot of himself wearing a fishnet and pearls. Doing so is proof of “how far I’ve come.” He can now show the world that his body “can be lucid, it can be free, it can be broken, it can be masculine, it can be feminine, and…I’m allowed to possess all of those things.”

“A couple of years ago, I would have been scared to be on the cover of Out,” he says, "but now, it feels like a whole different season and a whole different journey.”
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Jeremy Pope on making cover of OUT Magazine PRIDE Issue