Jeremy Pope channels drag, bodybuilding, & God in new photo series

Jeremy Pope is known as an actor on both stage and screen. And an acclaimed one at that. He’s received an Emmy nomination for Netflix’s Hollywood, a Golden Globe nomination for The Inspection, and Tony nominations for Choir Boy and Ain’t Too Proud (which also garnered him a Grammy nod).

But photography has always been his “secret weapon,” the 31-year-old out multihyphenate reveals. In fact, one of his side hustles in college, in addition to catering, was taking headshots and portraits, “so a lot of my friends knew me as [a photographer] first.”

In December, Pope revealed this secret weapon at the SCOPE Art Show in Miami Beach through a photography exhibition, “FLEX(bitch),” which explored depictions of masculinity through different stages of life. The artist, a Florida native, had gathered family members for the event at the SCOPE Art Show, including his father, a professional bodybuilder and pastor, whose influence can clearly be seen in the works. In the photojournalism series, there’s a portrait of a boy with a Bible; a lineup of toned male physiques, including his own; and portraiture of himself in drag alongside RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Symone.

The show was inspired in part by an annual bodybuilding competition his father organized. Of seeing the participants, Pope recalls being struck by “this almost performative way of people going onstage and showing their progression with their bodies. So it made me think about me as an actor and like, Oh, did I get my performative ways from that?” Pope also pondered the influence of the Black church with its own performativity and other “spaces that have an idea of hypermasculinity.”

“What are the things that I’ve taken that have benefited me?” Pope muses about his influences as an artist and as a human. “And what are those things that I’ve taken that are still in the way of me progressing to liberation and freedom internally?”

“There’s still these extreme ideas of what masculinity is supposed to look like,” he says. “I feel like within the queer community, it’s like you can be gay but don’t be clocked, don’t be overly femme. You just question like, What is that? What does that mean? What are we still holding on to? And what are we afraid to let go?”

This examination of internalized homophobia — its causes, manifestations, and possible exorcism — is where Pope centers his lens. Through this project, Pope even dressed in drag for the first time; he was personally styled by the House of Avalon for a photo shoot in Los Angeles. While Pope is no stranger to gender bending — he wore pearls and fishnet for his 2021 Out cover and arrived at the 2023 Met Gala in a 30-foot silk cape emblazoned with a portrait of Karl Lagerfeld — he realized he still had stigma to confront.

“I definitely challenge this idea of masculinity, feminine when it comes to [the red] carpet, when it comes to fashion, when it comes to extravagant events like the Met Gala or something like that where it’s almost like you’re allowed to do that, people are expecting you to do that,” Pope says. “But there was still this fear of like, I’m feminine, but I’m not in drag, there was still that within me: You’re gay, but I don’t wear lipstick, or you’re gay, but I don’t swish my hips…. So it was liberating to me, and I think I also wanted to educate myself on the drag experience and that’s why Symone was so influential to me.”

Pope first met the Drag Race champion in the air. Literally. The pair, who are both from the South, saw one another frequently on flights. Pope continued their interactions through social media, and he DMed her asking if she wanted to collaborate on a creative project.

Their resulting shoot together has a playful camp element (serving fish from a stand is an obvious gag). But there are layers of meaning with more serious import. For example, the price of the fish sandwich, $6.28, refers to the date the first brick was thrown at Stonewall. And there was transformation happening behind the scenes.

As much as the shoot broke barriers for Pope, it was also impactful for Symone. Pope recounts how his creative partner felt trepidation about being photographed out of drag. “I don’t think I can do this right now,” he recalls her saying. She was able to move forward after being reassured that she had Pope’s understanding and support.

“It was very, like, emotional for both of us,” Pope says of the shoot. It was “a moment for us to really like find harmony and unison together in creating this piece that speaks to not just our experience but to like other experiences and other lens of people’s entry point to life and love and self-acceptance.”

“The definition of flex is to bend,” reminds Pope, who recently returned to the stage in The Collaboration to portray Jean-Michel Basquiat, a role that he will reprise soon for a feature film adaptation. Pope credits all the roles he’s inhabited as an actor as leading him to this current moment as an artist.

“All of the characters I’ve played have taught me something and gifted me this moment of seeing myself through their POV, and that goes from Pose, that goes from Hollywood, that goes from The Inspection. All of my projects have like just furthered me as a human. So I think coming off of that and taking a moment to like, I wanna do something for myself. It led to here.”

This article is part of the Out January/February issue, which hits newsstands on February 6. Support queer media and subscribe — or download the issue through Amazon, Kindle, Nook, or Apple News on January 23.