In a new interview on Larry King
Now, actress Natalie Morales explained what queer means to her.
The 32-year-old Morales is best know
for playing Lucy on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation and
Anne Garcia in Netflix's Santa Clarita Diet. She is currently
promoting her latest film, the Billie Jean King biopic Battle of
the Sexes, which deals in part with King's struggle to come out
gay in the 70s.
Morales came out as queer in June in a
lengthy essay published on the online community Amy Poehler's Smart
Girls.
Morales told host Larry King why she
decided to come out.
“I was a supporter of LGBTQ rights
and I've always been an advocate for it,” Morales
explained. “And it started to feel a little bit disingenuous
to be a supporter and not openly say that I was a part of that group.
I just felt like it's nobody's business who I date, but then I
realized that normalizing … if you have any visibility, normalizing
this is important. Because when I was a kid I went through such a
hard time thinking exactly that. Thinking there's something really
wrong with me.”
“When did queer become the word for
bisexual?” King asked.
“It's not the same thing. It's not
to me,” Morales replied. “I think everybody has their own
definition of queer, maybe.”
“To me, it was derogatory.”
“It was. And it's sort of been
reclaimed by a lot of people. I reclaim it. The reason I don't use
bisexual is because I think bisexual delineates two sexes, right?
And so queer includes attraction to people who consider themselves
trans or people who consider themselves not of any gender.”
“For me, it's not about the sex.
It's about the person,” she added.