Actress Judith Light said in a recent
interview that she was inspired by the gay community to be “authentic
and courageous.”
The 66-year-old Light can currently be
seen playing Shelly Pfefferman on Amazon's transgender drama
Transparent and on Broadway in Therese Raquin opposite
Keira Knightley.
In an interview with Michigan LGBT
weekly Pride
Source, Light said that she was surprised by Transparent's
success.
“We didn't have any idea,” she
said. “Then when the success happened, we were all so grateful for
it that we had to make sure when we came back for the second season
that we were as responsible as we could possibly be.”
“Lives are at stake. And there are
people who are still being thrown out of their homes, and hate crimes
are perpetrated against them and they're fired from their jobs
because they're transgender. This is 2015. We feel very responsible
to do the right thing.”
“How has that message been
trasformative for you?” Light was asked.
“This is something that I have looked
toward for such a long time,” she answered. “It was the LGBTQ
community that inspired me to be the kind of person I wanted to be.
I wanted to be authentic and courageous, and for so long I wasn't.
When I began doing a lot of advocacy work in the early '80s for HIV
and AIDS, I saw the community and the way the community was operating
against all odds, against a world and a culture and country that gave
them nothing and denigrated them. It was unconstitutional behavior
toward the community, and this community just rose up and said, 'We
will create places to take our friends who are sick. We will do
their funerals. We will take them to the hospital. We will change
their IVs and their bedpans, and we will learn.' And the lesbians
came in and said, 'Gay men, you are our brothers and we will take
care of you,' and the drag queens and the bisexual community and the
transgender community – everybody pulled together. I looked at
this community and said, 'This is breathtaking. This is the kind of
world and people I want to be around. These are the kind of people I
want to be working with.'”
“It was sheer unadulterated
homophobia. … I wanted to be like the community,” she added.