Elliot Page sat down with Oprah Winfrey recently for his much anticipated first TV interview since coming out as transgender last December. The chat, filmed for AppleTV+’s series The Oprah Conversation, premieres today, and it delivers the kind of probing, empathetic dialogue you expect when you hear the words “Oprah interview.”
At the top of the episode, Winfrey laid out all of the rigorous prep work she and her producers did ahead of the conversation to ensure that her questions were respectful and her language affirming. That’s no small thing to admit, given that even well-meaning journalists still routinely fumble when discussing trans issues. (Though, let’s be honest, it seems kind of surprising that Winfrey hadn’t managed to catch Netflix’s Disclosure until just before she sat down with Page. I know she’s a busy lady, but still…)
Page, for his part, made it clear that he was speaking solely from his own experience. Others, he suggested, will have different experiences of their gender and their transition processes: “All trans people are different,” he insisted. “It feels important to say when there is such a lack of representation and [so much] misinformation.”
With that necessary table setting out of the way, Page and Winfrey went on to discuss a range of topics, from his experience of intense gender dysphoria during the press cycle and Oscar campaign for his breakthrough role in Juno to his newfound comfort in his body and his decision to talk openly about having top surgery.
“I wanted to share with people just how much it has changed my life,” he said. “I do believe it’s lifesaving.”
In one of the interview’s most moving and impactful moments, Page links that decision to the proliferation of anti-trans laws that are being pushed by Republican lawmakers across the country. “There is such an attack on trans healthcare right now, when already there’s such lack of access, or trans people who don’t even want to go to the doctor,” he explained. “What you are hearing from certain lawmakers are actual complete and utter…they’re lies. The reality of the healthcare is that it’s supported by medical institutions and it saves lives.”
As Winfrey pointed out, many of the proposed laws aim to deny gender affirming healthcare like puberty blockers to young people, in some cases re-categorizing the very care that Page described as lifesaving as child abuse. “Children will die,” Page insisted. “And it really is that simple.” He called on cis people to educate themselves on trans issues in order to combat the lies being spewed from the Right.
Page, who was quick to shout out trans women of color like Marsha P. Johnson and Miss Major who paved the way from him, vowed to continue the fight. “I just want kids to know that they’re loved, and I’m gonna continue to do what I can to try and help this society shift how it treats transgender people.”
