Elliot Web page is wearing a black hoodie and thick-rimmed glasses, his individual scaled right down to the three-inch window of a video-conference name. Such ranges of mediation (sartorial, technological, PR) often make for a considerably inscrutable dialog, the place the tangible human qualities are rendered as flat because the display screen. (This a lot everyone knows, three years right into a pandemic that’s made us all very on-line; it’s partly why some actors are eager to ditch audition movies and get again in entrance of casting brokers.) However Web page is one thing else. To name him luminous could be applicable—his pores and skin seems to be remarkably hydrated, regardless of a present stretch in Toronto’s wintry combine, filming season 4 of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. However the extra apt phrase is translucent. Feelings appear to stream freely, via phrases (extra searchingly exact than guarded) and gestures. At one level, reflecting on the “diploma of presence and luxury in my physique” skilled as a trans man these previous couple years, Web page’s eyes shut for the span of a number of sentences; his fingers, often animating the body, momentarily be part of collectively. It reads as a common expression of gratitude—or, within the spirit of dual-meaning emojis, a deserved high-five to oneself.
Since Web page introduced his transition in December 2020, there was an outpouring of help throughout the trade. The next April, talking with the trans author Thomas Web page McBee for Vainness Truthful, the actor described “this huge explosion of creativity,” as if all of the power spent grinding via existence have been immediately freed up, able to be poured right into a screenplay and music and, due this June, a debut memoir referred to as Pageboy. (The quilt portrait by Catherine Opie leans into basic Americana: white tank, blue denims, bicep tattoos.) When The Umbrella Academy returned final summer season for its third season, Web page’s character adopted an analogous arc: new haircut, new identify (Viktor Hargreeves). And now, the most recent flip within the highlight is a brand new Gucci Responsible marketing campaign, which sees Web page enjoying home with Julia Garner and A$AP Rocky, to the tune of the Harptones’ “Life Is However a Dream.” Garner, in pink lipstick and fake fur, is giving Hollywood starlet; Rocky wears lace-up pants—stylistic kin to corsets and chaps. Web page brings the colour with a sequined hibiscus-print button-down. Within the business-casual spirit of the Hawaiian shirt (Aloha Friday is an honored custom within the state), the look speaks to the significance of letting unfastened whereas staying grounded.
“You’re feeling it on each degree, large and small,” Web page says of the persevering with reverb of this sense of self. “Whether or not it’s sitting down and having the ability to really feel current sufficient to jot down daily, or whether or not it’s a sense of the way it simply feels to attend.” It hits totally different, mundane quietude. However proper now, the assaults are loud on the political proper, with new legal guidelines in Mississippi and Tennessee that ban gender-affirming take care of trans youth. (The ACLU is at the moment monitoring 421 anti-LGBTQ payments throughout the nation.) Right here, Web page talks about staying engaged within the push for equality, the time-capsule odor of highschool physique spray, and Gucci Responsible’s understated superpowers.
Vainness Truthful: Prior to now you’ve talked about self-identifying as a boy once you have been little—writing pretend love letters and signing them “Jason.” How did you navigate the perfume-cologne divide early on?
Elliot Web page: I suppose the smells that I’ve personally gravitated in direction of have by no means modified as a result of after I was a very little child, I’d sneak into my brother’s room and steal a contact of his cologne or Outdated Spice or no matter. Then, in fact, this sense such as you’re not speculated to put on that, and navigating these inside and exterior expectations that clearly are infused in a lot of what we do and put on, [with] hair and make-up. It’s a journey for everyone, I suppose, in our personal particular person methods.
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After I take into consideration identification shift, in life and in fiction, a haircut is usually the marker, as it’s along with your character Viktor in The Umbrella Academy. Was there a perfume for you early on that equally marked an inside shift or felt like a more true reflection of self?
It’s as if there’s quite a lot of moments. You had a second after which it slipped away, and then you definately discovered your second once more—the way in which through which we uncover how we discover ourselves or what speaks to us. However I’d most likely return to, oh my God, actually being with my highschool boyfriend after I’m 16 and wanting his Axe physique spray. And even smelling sandalwood for the primary time. These smells that [made me go], “Wait, why am I regarding this odor a lot?” Then as now, I’ve beloved these comparable smells, even with Gucci Responsible, with regard to that earthy, daring, sensual odor that I like.
