Multi-hyphenate performer Frankie Grande hopes his memoir, Supergay, will infuriate Donald Trump and his supporters.
Grande told Obsessed: The Podcast that the title of his debut book, Supergay!: A Memoir, embodies the attitude he hopes to see the rest of the LGBTQ community take in the age of Trump, in a shirtless interview (“It’s 102 degrees in New York City and not much better in my dressing room,” he said) that was recorded before the Broadway star suffered a mild concussion due to a stage mishap.
“That’s kind of the attitude I think we need right now. It’s like, be safe, of course—safety first—don’t do this in the middle of an unbelievably conservative red state where everyone around you has a gun. Let’s be smart,“ he said. ”But we have to be just loud and active and supportive of each other in the community in a vocal way, in a way that we really haven’t had to be since the ’80s. So it’s like, let’s get loud, let’s get angry, and let’s safely tell the administration to f--- off.”
Grande currently stars in Broadway’s Titaníque, a comedy-musical take on the famous sunken ship, following his run in the hit off-Broadway production. He took time off from the show, in which he plays Victor Garber, after he was struck in the face by a prop during his July 2 Titaníque performance. The star returned to the production on July 6 after recovering.
He’s starred in the show for nearly four years and serves as an executive producer of the Broadway version, which adds to his extensive producing credits, which include Hamlet (2009), La Bête (2010), Dana H. (2021), Is This a Room (2021), and Born Yesterday (2011).
The older half-brother of pop sensation Ariana Grande, who is also known for his reality TV credits, including Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother, wrote Supergay, a collection of essays that chronicle his journey to self-acceptance, to uplift others but also “inflame people that don’t want to read it.”
“I want everyone to see that this guy, who is 43 years old and who wrote a book called Supergay, did not have it easy coming out of the closet,” Grande explained. “It was tumultuous. And years of my life where I lived in fear every single day of my life. I want people to know that because I think that they look at this,” he said, gesturing to himself, “and they assume, ‘Oh, he has it easy. It was probably fine for him.’ And I want them to know that it was not.”
That said, he added with a laugh, “You can still be this f---ing gay, you can have a difficult time coming out, and still get to this place where I’m at right now, which is, literally a professional homosexual.”
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