But also, just on a personal basis, people are still falling in love, people are still getting married and building communes and hosting drag shows and fighting back. And it just makes me, personally, so happy to have a space to learn that every day, because we need that right now more than anything. Oh, my God. We need hope so bad.
TV: Would you say you’re in your producer era now? Feels like you’re trying to take more control behind the scenes of what you work on.
JSB: In my producer era, for sure. I have so much more respect and appreciation for all the producers, because, holy shi*t, producing is a lot. Because [Today in Gay is] a daily show, we were like, oh, we’ve already recorded 35 episodes or something, which on a normal one show a week podcast, we’d be in like September by now! Like, God, we’re moving and learning at hyper speed.
We are a big team, we have six producers now – myself, Nay Bever, Lauren Klein, Jax Ko, Linh Nguyen, and Maritza Navarro. As a team, oh, my God, we need that many people. We need six producers to make a daily show run, and everyone has a different perspective and a different approach.
And thank God for all types of queers, all across the birth chart spectrum. We’ve got a lot of Capricorn energy, a lot of Cancer energy, and a good amount of Scorpio. That’s what we need to [read] these headlines.
TV: Right, because it’s all heavy. How are you coping?
JSB: When I’m by myself, it’s scary, but as soon as we’re all together on the computer recording the episode, the fear goes away, because I’m like, oh, right — community, that’s the point. They want us – they being, you know who I’m talking about – they want us to feel isolated, so that we do feel scared and overwhelmed and powerless, but as soon as we’re in community, which the gays are really good at, we’re smarter, we’re stronger, things get lighter. It’s not as hard or scary. And that’s the point of the podcast, is to have this community to turn to and tune into every day, so that it’s not as scary.
Everything is easier in community. It’s easier to march, it’s easier to push for change. It’s even easier to have a good day when there’s other people around. So yes and no.
TV: Speaking of scary horrifying things, let’s move on to Yellowjackets. I’ve been bingeing the episodes as soon as I have them.
JSB: Okay, you must have had some weird ass dreams.
TV: Many. Very weird. I feel like adult Taissa has been all over the place; do you feel like Tawny Cypress’s performance influences your own?
JSB: It makes it feel like, whatever choice I make as younger Tai, it’s fine, because Tawny as Tai is gonna have a lot more to deal with. Nothing I do will seem that crazy.
TV: How much of the season have you actually seen?
JSB: You’ve seen more than me. They love us to be in the dark throughout the season as we’re filming. It’s not like the shows where they give you all ten episodes, or they tell you what’s coming in the next one: We know nothing about what happens, and then as the rollout happens per season, we’re always the last to see the episodes. I don’t know why. There must be a method to the madness. Or there’s just not a single gay person on staff, because a gay person would know that we want to see the episodes.
TV: How do you feel your performance of Tai has evolved over the years?
JSB: It’s a bit odd, because when I shot this pilot, I was 25; this was pre-pandemic. I was in a different relationship and living in a different place with different people — lived a completely different life. And the difference between 25 and not 25 is drastic. I’ve gone through a lot of changes as a person.
