Katy O’Brian might be known for her muscles, but it was mussels (as in, the bivalves) that made her realize she was queer.
The Love Lies Bleeding star recently spoke with the LGBTQ+ publication PRIDE about how she came to understand herself as a queer woman. She started to suspect that she might not be straight while attending drag shows at her alma mater, Indiana University at Bloomington. But O’Brian’s “tipping point” came when she and a man went on a date to get mussels and realized, “I’m kind of more into this shellfish than I am into this guy.”
“I was always really interested in an emotional or maybe even just bro-y connection with my guy friends,” she told PRIDE. “I felt very close to them. But in terms of attraction, it was really not happening.”
O’Brian realized that even though she grew up in an accepting family, she was hesitant to identify as queer because she didn’t want to be “a stereotype.” “But I guess I was,” she conceded. “It got to the point where I literally had friends come up to me and be like, ‘So, are you gay yet?’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ And then the joy on their faces when I finally said yes was great.”
Elsewhere in the profile, O’Brian discussed her experiences in Hollywood as a queer woman, and as a mixed-race person. At the time that she was starting to go out for auditions, she shared that “everything [casting was looking for] was like ‘ethnically ambiguous’ or ‘androgynous,’” which she also admitted was “cringe to read it or to think about it.”
“I just happened to come into Hollywood at a time where they were trying to start tiptoeing people that look like me into film and television,” O’Brian said.
And thank God she did. Who would we, as queer people, be as a community if it wasn’t for O’Brian’s performance as a bodybuilder alongside fellow gay icon Kristen Stewart?
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