Carl Clemons-Hopkins describes the experience of starring in Hacks as one of “surviving.” It was by far the biggest role of their career. They were shooting in the middle of a pandemic. Most of their scenes were opposite certified legend Jean Smart. “The objective was, ‘Okay, just survive. Don’t get anybody sick. Don’t step on anybody’s line. Hit your mark. Say your line, go home,’” the actor says.
Then came this month’s shocker of an Emmy nomination for best supporting actor in a comedy series. “It’s like, ‘Oh, we’re actually honoring you for surviving.’”
Clemons-Hopkins could be the first openly nonbinary performer to win an acting Emmy—a bittersweet feat, they concede. As discussion around gendered acting categories has intensified, with nonbinary performers like Billions’ Asia Kate Dillon challenging the status quo, the Television Academy announced for this coming Emmys that any winner could change their credit on the trophy from “actor” or “actress” to “performer.” The debate still extends well beyond this small but notable step, though, toward questions of whether the categories should be separated by identity at all. (An argument for the continued distinctions, it’s worth noting, is that women have been historically underrepresented at Hollywood awards without them.) Groups including the MTV TV & Movie Awards and the Television Critics Association Awards have done away with gender-divided categories entirely.
Coming off of small recurring roles in series like The Chi and Chicago Med, Clemons-Hopkins had the chance to flex their comedic—and romantic, and dramatic—muscles in Hacks as Marcus, the workaholic chief operating officer of Smart’s iconic Vegas comic Deborah Vance. The role earned Clemons-Hopkins great reviews and major industry recognition. Their Emmy nod came as the biggest surprise of Hacks’ overall embrace, signaling the show’s momentum and popularity.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Vanity Fair, Clemons-Hopkins says all this attention is opening up a whole new path to act, work, and live.
Vanity Fair: When you were first in the process of going for this role, you did a chemistry read with Jean Smart, right?
Carl Clemons-Hopkins: That was around this time last year. I’m just over-the-moon excited that that one really good Zoom call could have led to all of this.
So I hear this is the first year an openly nonbinary performer has been Emmy nominated.
Apparently, apparently.
It’s both historic and maybe kind of unfortunate that it’s taken this long.
Whenever we hear a “first” of anything, be it first Black person to be nominated for something or winning something—it’s cause for celebration, it is cause for note, for honorable mention, but it’s also just a reminder of how far we have to go for actual equality. The actual understanding of humanity. I think a lot of people don’t realize how tenuous the social situation actually is in this country and how very real the danger is for a lot of people who look like me, for a lot of people who identify outside of the heteronormative binary.
I’m so excited for the beautiful tapestry of color that this awards season is presenting. And all of us are still in very real fights to be seen, to be heard, to be equal, to be recognized as just human…. So I’m very excited about all of these firsts and new and most, and I’m also very aware that that’s just how much more we have to keep going.
You recently said that you’ve really only begun to consider the idea of a nongendered-awards acting category. I’m curious, now having been nominated in that “actor” category, if your feelings have evolved. The Emmys recently determined winners could change the name on the trophy from “actor” to “performer.” But of course you’re still in this category.
I’m grateful to be in this category. I was trained to be an, and adopted the term of, actor. Maybe this is my privilege of being assigned male at birth, but I don’t see “actors” as a gendered term.
I agree.
Personally. As far as I’m concerned I’m nominated for a supporting actor…. It’s a term of trade, not a gender. If we were welding, there’s not a weldress. I hope that as hearts and minds are becoming more open, that the minds part become more diligent in figuring out how to keep hearts happy. It’s not really my bag to figure out, and I’m excited for whoever figures it out does. I don’t know if that was very eloquent.
It was. I think it’s just ongoing and a new topic, really, in the context of awards at least.
Well, it’s the context of everything. A lot of people are realizing the very limited structure that the society that we live in is under. And as we’re moving more toward inclusivity, as we’re moving more toward equality, people are realizing that it’s not going to be, Oh, I’ll just say this then. Oh, I’ll just change that. It’s like, no, no, no. If the national experiment has caused genocide, slavery, and countless deaths, maybe it’s not working. Maybe we need to redo this experiment. So not that a trophy category is the entire American experiment [laughs], but I think the more we see in these little entities—things that we have in a society as we move toward wanting to change those—we make them more inclusive. If the intent is love and the intent is inclusion and the intent is positivity, then it’ll figure itself out. It just may take a little more work than some people are comfortable with.
I don’t even think I realized until I finished the first season, but Hacks is a deeply, quite thoroughly queer show in ways both direct and subtle.
I finished the season and I went, “What is this queer ass show I just watched?!” What I’m hopeful about is there’s always that burden, especially with American entertainment, of showing what’s possible. I’m excited that we’re able to do it in a new way: We’re not going to yell at you. We’re just going to exist despite what you may feel about it, and you’ll hopefully enjoy it or you won’t, but I’m loving this continued existence as protest. This perseverance as protest. It’s a really interesting thing, I think, to happen on television.
To that point, I thought Marcus was such a refreshing depiction of a queer character in a show who gets a romantic story line and all these things, but the queerness is not necessarily a plot point, for lack of a better term.
Yes!
Can you talk a little bit about how you approached that, especially this being such a breakout role for you?
I, too, was very refreshed by the role. I was excited because this is the longest time I’ve gotten to exist within a character and have a character. And we got to go home and meet his mom and realize different things about him. He has his first real relationship…. He’s very different from me, but it was a bit easier because the writers had made this complete, entire world. I knew exactly how he fit into the world of this story, but finding his why and his reasoning and his decision-making was day to day, episode to episode, piece by piece. It was a real blend between a puzzle and a scavenger hunt because every time we’d get a script, I’d learn more about who this person is.
To have someone who I could grow with and discover with and learn with—that was really, really fun for me.
Coming into a character like this, receiving this kind of recognition, does it change the way you think about what your career can look like and what kinds of roles you can get?
In many ways, yes. When I envisioned an acting career over 25 years ago, this wasn’t even in the concept of reality for me to imagine. I don’t think I initially dreamed this big. It’s so comforting to know that this is present and possible and it definitely does expand my current scope of what could be. As I’m sure you know, we’re so new as a society to these types of stories being even present, much less celebrated and hopefully getting to a point of commonplace. I mean, that’s the ideal. That any story about any type of human is commonplace because we’re all everywhere. Growing up, there were [few] queer characters who were characters, as opposed to the butt of a joke or the very special episode.
Right.
So this is very exciting and very much expanding the scope of my dreams.
Can you take me back to the earliest stages of wanting to be an actor? What drew you to it, given the lack of representation you mention?
When I was six, my dad took me to see Glory and that was it for me. And then, I’m from Atlanta, and Georgia State had teaching artists teaching theater classes and puppetry classes and all sorts of stuff. I would always take the MARTA downtown every Saturday in first, second grade—which is a very independent move for a child when I think about it. [Laughs.] Yup. And then doing a lot of either community theater or church stuff. I went to college for theater, I did my internship at Georgia Shakespeare Festival where we were working maybe 18-hour days, getting $250 every other week. I loved every minute of it.
I was telling someone earlier, I didn’t really consider film and television until I saw Moonlight in 2016. My first clue was this film called Brother to Brother that Anthony Mackie was in. I was very, very, very young. I remember seeing it in high school. And that was my first like, “Wait, what? I can exist in entirety? That’s insane.” And then Jeffrey Wright, his performance in Angels in America. I mean, that performance told me, “Hey, it’s not about you and your expression. You need to try to be good if you can. Get some classes, get some training, get some craft under you.”
How long have you been an out nonbinary actor? And what has that experience been like?
It was less of an “out” situation and more an understanding within myself telling the person I love, and my mother who bore me. My mom didn’t really understand what it meant. And then I gave a textbook definition. She goes, Oh yeah, great, great, great. This was before people started putting pronouns everywhere on monikers or handles or résumés. There was no language around that. And once the language around it started coming out, then I’m like, Okay, I’ll just attach this.
I’ve had the privilege of viewing pronouns in a way that other people in our queer family have not. If you per se identified as she/her you may not have had the freedom to do that in previous years. And so you identifying in that and me respecting that is part of what keeps you safe, it’s part of what makes you freer. So I was like, well, let me, for myself, but also for my queer family, make sure that I am as clear as I can be about my pronouns. And so I was. I’m less demanding about it than other people are just because that’s my experience. It’s been about just going on three years of walking in a truth and acknowledging the truth when it’s asked.
But it’s weird being in this space now because I’m being asked often to somewhat explain myself.
Sure.
So it’s been a few years of taking it step-by-step, conversation by conversation, invite by invite, really. I’m not here to prove myself to anyone. It’s not for someone else’s understanding. It’s for my own enlightenment. You have to respect me, but you don’t need to understand me. I’m not here to do the very real research and work that I’ve had to do for someone else.
I think part of the work for people finally catching up to this stuff is them doing the work themselves.
There is required reading. [Laughs.]
What did the period before landing Hacks look like for you?
I spent the last decade or so just trying to figure out how I can go forward with all of these powers seeming to want to keep me back. Finding the art of fighting and hustle for me, and how I do it. What I didn’t count on was five, six years ago being like, Hey, there’s more to you than you think. You also need to figure this out while also figuring out business. While also figuring out your craft while also figuring out your life, your love, and your relationships. So it’s been an interesting and uphill, but gratifying, journey so far. And I’m really excited to continue it and knowing that things like Marcus is possible, like that verbiage around gender queerness and Black expression and that stuff is possible. My reaction to reading Hacks is possible. You know, that’s really encouraging and it helps fuel that hope. That’s sometimes all you’ve got.
That period you mentioned, five or six years ago, figuring your craft out, figuring yourself out—did you find that those things sort of informed one another, where you have changed as an actor?
Deeply. The more I invest in the understanding of myself, the more I’m able to invest in the understanding of someone else. I will be very honest, in the beginning I wanted to be an actor because I didn’t want to be me. I realized very early on that “me” wasn’t enough for some people. Or “me” was too much for some people. Or “me” wasn’t right for some people.
But people want me to be in this space and now it’s less of an escape, and more of an exploration. Now it’s like, I know these things about myself and my past, present, and hopeful future—let’s explore someone else’s. I’m really grateful to have the opportunity to do that with this role. But long answer short, yes. These things do make the art of acting and storytelling much more rewarding and full.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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