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Peppermint thrives in the spotlight
In exclusive interview, she talks Netflix show — and the need to resist Trump’s attacks
As an entertainer, there’s not much that Peppermint hasn’t done. She’s a singer, actor, songwriter, reality TV personality, drag queen, podcaster and the list goes on. Most importantly, as an activist she has been an invaluable role model for the trans, queer, and Black communities.
She’s a trailblazer who boasts an impressive list of ‘firsts.’ She is the first out trans contestant to be cast on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” (Season 9). She is the first trans woman to originate a principal musical role for Broadway’s “Head Over Heels.” She was also the first trans woman to compete in the runaway hit series “Traitors,” on Peacock, and she is the ACLU’s first-ever Artist Ambassador for Trans Justice. Her accolades are a true testament of the courage it took for Peppermint to live her authentic self.
We caught up with Peppermint to chat about her activism, taking on bigger roles on screen, our current political and social climate and life beyond the lens. For Peppermint, coming out as trans was not just a moment of strength—it was a necessity.
“It unfolded exactly as I had imagined it in terms of just feeling good and secure about who I am. I was in so much pain and sort of misery and anguish because I wasn’t able to live as free as I wanted to and that I knew that other people do when they just wake up. They get dressed, they walk out the door and they live their lives. Being able to live as your authentic self without fear of being persecuted by other people or by the government is essential to being healthy,” Peppermint tells the Blade in an exclusive interview.
“I was not able to imagine any other life. I remember saying to myself, ‘If I can’t imagine a life where I’m out and free and feeling secure and confident and left alone, then I don’t even want to imagine any kind of a life in the future,’” says Peppermint.
Recently, Peppermint returned for season 2 of Netflix’s comedy “Survival of the Thickest.” She added some spice and kick to the first season in her role as a drag bar owner. This time around, her character moves center stage, as her engagement and wedding become a major plot line in the show. Her expanded role and high-profile trans representation come at just the right time.
“It’s the largest acting role I’ve ever had in a television show, which my acting degree thanks me. It feels right on time, in a day where they’re rolling back trans rights and wanting to reduce DEI and make sure that we are limited from encouraging companies, corporations, industries, and institutions from not only featuring us, but supporting us, or even talking about us, or even referencing us.
“It feels great to have something that we can offer up as resistance. You can try to moralize, but it’s tougher to legislate art. So it feels like this is right on time and I’m just really grateful that they gave me a chance and that they gave my character a chance to tell a greater story.
Peppermint’s expanded role also accompanies a boom in queer representation in Black-powered media. Networks like BET and Starz and producers like Tyler Perry, are now regularly showcasing queer Black folks in main story lines. What does Peppermint think is fueling this increased inclusion?
“Queer folks are not new and queer Black folks are not new and Black folks know that. Every Black person knows at least one person who is queer. We are everywhere. We have not always been at the forefront in a lot of storytelling, that’s true, and that’s the part that’s new. It’s Hollywood taking us from the place where they usually have held us Black, queer folks in the makeup room, or as the prostitute, as an extra—not that there’s anything wrong with sex work or playing a background performer. I’ve played the best of the hookers! But those [roles] are very limiting.
“Hollywood has not historically done and still does not do a very good job of, including the voices of the stories that they make money [on]. And I think they’re realizing [the need] to be inclusive of our stories and our experiences, because for a long time it was just our stories without our actual experiences. It’s also exciting. It’s dramatic. It makes money. And they’re seeing that. So I think they’re just dipping their toes in. I think that they’re going to realize that balance means having us there in the room.”
Peppermint’s activism is tireless. She has raised more than six figures for prominent LGBTQ rights groups, she continues to speak around the nation, appears regularly on major media outlets addressing trans and LGBTQ issues and has been honored by GLAAD, World of Wonder, Out magazine, Variety, Condé Nast and more—all while appearing on screen and onstage in a long list of credits.
Now, under the Trump administration, she doesn’t have time to take a breath.
“I wouldn’t be able to do it if it weren’t second nature for me. Of course, there are ups and downs with being involved with any social issue or conversation and politics. But I am, for now, energized by it. It’s not like I’m energized by like, ‘Ooh, I just love this subject!’ right? It’s like, ‘Oh, we’re still being discriminated against, we gotta go and fight.’
“That’s just what it is. I get energy because I feel like we are quite literally fighting for our lives. I know that is hyperbole in some regards, but they are limiting access to things like housing, healthcare, job security and not having identification. Passport regulations are being put in a blender.”
Peppermint also mentions her thoughts on the unfair mandates to remove trans service members and revoke the rights and resources from the veterans who worked their whole lives to fight for this country.
“When you strip all these things away, it makes it really difficult for people to have a life and I know that that is what they’re doing. When I look around and see that that is what is at stake, I certainly feel like I’m fighting for my life. And that’s energizing.
“The only thing that would be the most rewarding besides waking up in a utopia and suddenly we’re all equal and we’re not discriminating against each other—which probably is not happening this year—is to be able to be involved in a project like this, where we can create that world. It’s also being built by people who are a part of that story in real life and care about it in real life.”
Peppermint is clear on her point that now is the time for all of the letters of the LGBTQ community to come together. Everyone who is trans and queer should be joining the fight against the issues that affect us all.
“Just trust us and understand that our experiences are tied together. That is how and why we are discriminated against in the way[s] that we are. The people who discriminate—just like how they can’t really distinguish between somebody who’s Dominican and somebody who’s African American — you’re Black when you’re getting pulled over. We are discriminated against in much the same way. It’s the same with being trans or queer or gender non-conforming or bi, we all have our own experiences and they should be honored.
“When laws are being created to harm us, we need to band together, because none of y’all asses is gonna be able to stop them from getting rid of marriage equality—which is next. If you roll the tape back to three years ago when somebody was trying to ask me about drag queen bans on readings in school, I was saying they’re coming for trans rights, which comes for bodily autonomy and abortion rights, which comes for gay marriage rights. Those three things will be wiped out.
Peppermint doesn’t take a pause to get fired up and call gay folk out in their obligation to return the favor to the Black trans community.
She shares with us her final thoughts.
“You cis-gender homosexuals need to stand the fuck up and understand that we are standing in front of you. It’s very difficult to understand this and know this, but so many of the rights that we have were hard fought and won by protest and by people fighting very hard for them. And many of those people in every single instance from the suffrage movement, obviously Civil Rights, queer rights, the AIDS and HIV movement—Black queer people have been there the entire time. Trans people have always been a part of that story, including Stonewall. Yes, we are using different terminology. Yes, we have different lenses to view things through, but let me tell you, if you allow us to be sacrificed before you see us go off the side, you will realize that your foot is shackled to our left foot. So, you better stand the fuck up!”
Peppermint for president!
a&e features
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more
If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.
Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.
Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”
“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.
“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.
“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”
“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”
Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.
Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane
(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)
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Award-winning D.C. chef reaching new culinary heights
Anthony Jones of Marcus DC competing on ‘Top Chef’
In Anthony Jones’s kitchen, all sorts of flags fly, including his own. Executive chef at award-winning restaurant Marcus DC, Jones has reached culinary heights (James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef, anyone?), yet he’s just getting started.
Briefly stepping away from his award-winning station, Jones took a moment under a different set of lights. Recently, he temporarily gave up his post at the restaurant for a starring small-screen slot on the latest season of “Top Chef,” which debuted in March. (The show airs weekly on Bravo and Peacock).
Before his strategic slice-and-dice competition, however, Jones, who identifies as gay, draws from his deep DMV roots. In the years before “Top Chef” and the top chef spot at Marcus, he was born and raised in Sunderland, Md., in southern Maryland, near the Chesapeake.
Early memories were steeped in afternoons on boats with his dad bonding over fishing, and wandering the garden of his great-grandparents spread with fresh vegetables and a few hogs. “It was Southern, old-school ethics and upbringing,” he said. “Family and food went hand in hand.” Weekends meant grabbing bushels of crabs, dad and grandma would cook and crack them. Family members would host fish fries for extra cash. In this seafood-heavy youth, Jones managed time to sneak in episodes of the “OG” Japanese “Iron Chef” show, which helped inspire him to pursue a career in the kitchen.
Jones moved to D.C. after graduating from college, ending up at lauded Restaurant Eve, and met famed chef Marcus Samuelson, who brought him to Miami to be part of the opening team for Red Rooster Overtown. After three years, Jones moved back to D.C., where he ran Dirty Habit, reinventing and reimagining the menu, integrating West African flavors and ingredients.
Samuelson, however, wouldn’t let a talent like Jones stay away for too long. Pulling Jones back into his orbit, Samuelson elevated Jones to help him open his namesake restaurant Marcus DC, which has been named a top-five restaurant by the Washington Post. Since then, Jones has been nominated as a semifinalist for the RAMMYs Rising Culinary Star in 2026 and won the Eater DC’s Rising Chef award in 2025.
Samuelson’s Marcus is a tour de force interpreting the Black Diaspora on the plate, from the American South to West Africa, along with his signature “Swedopian” touches. Yet it’s Jones who has deeply informed the plate, elevating his own story to date. Marcus DC is primarily a seafood restaurant, which serves Jones well.
“Where I’m from is seafood heavy, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve moved away from meat.” Veggies and fish are hero dishes. His own dish, Mel’s Crab Rice, was not only lauded by the Washington Post, but is framed by his youth carrying home the crustaceans from Mel’s crab truck. It’s a bowl of Carolina rice, layered with pickled okra, uni béarnaise, and crab. Jones also points to a dish on the opening menu, rockfish and brassica, paying respect to a landmark D.C. institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl. Jones reverse engineered a favorite bowl of chili that’s seafood instead of meat forward, leveraging octopus and rockfish along with different riffs of cauliflower: showing his intellectual, creative, and cultural sides.
While “Top Chef” is showing Jones’s spotlight side, he also lets his identity show at work. “In the kitchen, I make sure we’re inclusive. We don’t tolerate discrimination. Everyone that’s here should feel confident to express themselves. There are so many different flags in the kitchen.”
Jones says that he didn’t fully express his gay identity until fairly recently. He felt reluctant coming out to certain family members, “you’re scared to tell them about being different,” he says, and while that anxiety ate at him, “I’m lucky and fortunate to have unconditional love and that weight off my shoulders.”
Today, “I’m me all the time, Monday to Sunday. I’m honest with people, and my staff is honest with me.”
“Being a chef is hard,” he says, “and being a chef of color is even more difficult.”
Yet his LGBTQ identity is a juggling act, he says. “I need to keep that balance, because once someone finds out something about you, their opinion can change, whether you want it or not.”
Being on a whole season of TV cooking competition, however, might mean millions more might have an opinion of him (Jones has appeared on TV already, on an episode of “Chopped”). To prepare, he says, “I’ve just kept a level head. It’s just an honor to be on top chef with amazing people happy to be there.”
Plus, this season is set in the Carolinas, and Jones attended Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s a full story of my life, now a monumental moment for me.”
Jones also recently was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. “JBF has been a north star, a dream for so long. I always had this goal on my wall.”
Being at the top spot at Marcus DC, making waves through his accolades, and cooking on Bravo means that Jones is highly visible. “I think that if someone has a similar background to me, and can see our story, trajectory, and success, they can have more ability to be themselves. This is my goal.”
Back at Marcus, Jones has plenty up his chef’s white’s sleeves. A new spring menu is in the works. He’ll be launching a new tasting menu “dining experience,” he says, and has plans to work on more events and collaborations with chefs and friends to bring in new talent and share the culinary wealth.
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Introducing the Torchbearers Awards honoring queer, trans women and nonbinary people
Meet the Legends and Illuminators lighting new paths
The Torchbearers Awards are more than recognition—they are a continuation of legacy. They honor the quiet architects of progress in our community: those who organize, advocate, build, and protect, often without fanfare but always with purpose. Rooted in a belief in intentional recognition, this honor names those who carry our movements forward—those who make room for others, who remind us that change is both generational and generative. In a time marked by uncertainty and challenge, these leaders push forward with courage, clarity, and an unwavering commitment to expanding opportunity and equity.
This year’s honorees reflect the full breadth of our community, spanning generations, backgrounds, identities, and industries. From Legends, with decades of leadership and having created pathways for others, to Illuminators, who are lighting new paths with creativity and innovation, each Torchbearer represents the power of intergenerational leadership and the strength found in our diversity. They are organizers, advocates, artists, policy leaders, healers, and changemakers whose lived experiences shape a shared vision for equity and liberation.
This award is our love letter to queer and trans women and nonbinary people who carry the flame when it would be easier to let it dim. To those who consistently show up, who use their voice and visibility and stand firm, often without recognition, so that others may live more freely and fully. The Torchbearers Awards celebrates not just what has been done, but the enduring spirit, responsibility, and collective care that ensure the work continues, and that the flame is always passed forward.
Co-Creators of the Torchbearers Awards: Shannon Alston, June Crenshaw, Heidi Ellis
Torchbearers Awards Advisory Board: Aditi Hardikar, Lesley Bryant, Jasmine Wilson-Bryant, Stephen Rutgers
ILLUMINATOR AWARDEES
- Representative Sharice Davids (she/her), (D, KS-03)
— U.S. House of Representatives - Greisa Martinez Rosas (she/her/ella)
— Executive Director, United We Dream - Paola Ramos (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Meagan A. Fitzgerald (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Jessica L. Lewis (she/her)
— Founder / Producer, Play Play DC - Savannah Wade (she/her)
— Founder, OAR Agency - Suhad Babaa (she/her)
— Filmmaker/ Former Executive Director of Just Vision - Ashlee Davis (she/her)
— Global Head of Inclusive Outcomes, Ancestry - Jazmine Hughes (she/her)
— Journalist and Former Editor at New York Times Magazine - Queen Adesuyi (they/she)
— Policy Advisor & Organizer, ReFrame Health & Justice - Michele Rayner, Esq. (she/her)
— Civil Rights Attorney, State Representative (Florida House of Representatives) - Gaby Vincent (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Jenny Nguyen (she/her)
— Founder & Owner, The Sports Bra - Denice Frohman (she/her)
— Independent Artist, Poet / Performer - Vida Rangel (she/her)
— Founder, Our Trans Capital - Roxanne Anderson (they/them)
— Executive Director, Our Space - Ann Marie Gothard (she/her)
— Co-Founder & President, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Diana Rodriquez (she/her)
— Co-Founder & CEO, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Wendi Cooper (she/her)
— Founder / Executive Director, Transcending Women - Toya Matthews (she/her)
— City of San Antonio, Texas - Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Charity Blackwell (she/her)
— Poet, LGBTQ Advocate & Community Leader - Wilhelmina Indermaur (she/her)
— Director of Communications, Tyler Clementi Foundation - Em Chadwick (she/her)
— CMO, For Them & Autostraddle - Kylo Freeman (they/he)
— CEO, For Them & Autostraddle
LEGEND AWARDEES
- Sheila Alexander-Reid (she/her)
— Executive Director, PHL Diversity, Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau - Cassandra Cantave Burton (she/her)
— Interim Director of Thought Leadership & Senior Research Advisor, AARP - leigh h. mosley (she/her)
— Photographer / Educator, PhotoFlo Photography - Jenn M. Jackson, PhD (they/them)
— Assistant Professor of Political Science; Author & Columnist, Syracuse University - Jordyn White (she/her)
— COO, Washington Prodigy / VP of Leadership Development & Research, HRC Foundation - AJ Hikes (they/them)
— Deputy Executive Director, ACLU - RaeShanda Lias (she/her)
— Digital Creator, RL Lockhart - Donna Payne-Hardy (she/her)
— Educator, EEO Specialist, Founder of NBJC, Former Leader at the Human Rights Campaign - Courtney R. Snowden (she/her)
— Principal, Blueprint Strategy Group - Gaye Adegbalola (she/her)
— Musician & Activist, Musician / Inductee of the Blues Hall of Fame - Cheryl A. Head (she/her)
— Independent Author, Novelist (Crime Fiction) - Letitia Gomez (she/her)
— The American LGBTQ+ Museum, Board Chair - Lynne Brown (she/her)
— Publisher, Washington Blade - Shay Franco-Clausen (She/Her/Ella/Queen)
— Political Strategist and Organizer - Melissa L. Bradley (she/her)
— Founder & Managing Partner, New Majority Ventures - Meghann Burke (she/her)
— Executive Director, NWSL Players Association - Victoria Kirby York, MPA (she/they)
— Director of Public Policy & Programs, National Black Justice Collective - Joli Angel Robinson (she/her)
— CEO, Center on Halsted - Jeannine Frisby LaRue (she/her)
— CEO, Moxie Strategies - Alice Wu (she/her)
— Film Director (Saving Face, The Half of It) / Screenwriter - Storme Webber (she/her)
— Interdisciplinary Artist / Educator, University of Washington - Kim Stone
— CEO of the Washington Spirit, Washington Spirit - Mickalene Thomas
— American Visual Artist, Mickalene Thomas Studio - Erika Lorshbough (any/they/she)
— Executive Director, interACT - J. Gia Loving (she/ella)
— Co-Executive Director, GSA Network
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