PG: I watched your "It Gets Better" videos. You both made me weep.
ZQ: I had so much fear in me back then. I was doing "Angels in America" and pulled [director] Michael Greif and [playwright] Tony Kushner aside and said, "Doing this play is possibly going to facilitate my public coming-out." They were very supportive. And that summer, all these bullied kids started killing themselves. That's what motivated me. But I was still so afraid. The one thing I hadn't said — "I'm gay, too. It gets better. Trust me" — is the one thing I couldn't say.
PG: You weren't out when you made the video?
ZQ: No, I came out the next year — after another boy killed himself, just months after he made an "It Gets Better" video. I felt slammed by my hypocrisy. Here I was, hedging my bets. What was I protecting? I had already arrived at the point of being able to work consistently. There was no way around my fear, except through it. And in the same way Audra got involved with Covenant House, I got involved with the Trevor Project. I did the training and had all these amazing conversations. I was someone there to help. And the freedom I feel now, I would never give that up for anything.
Photo Mr. Quinto speaking in 2012 at "Trevor Live" for the Trevor Project at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. The group provides crisis intervention for the L.G.B.T. community. Credit Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Trevor Project
AM: It had to have deepened you as an actor, too.
ZQ: When I came back to the theater, as Tom in "The Glass Menagerie," I had that sense of what you have to sacrifice in yourself to set yourself free.
AM: And a sense of surrender in your roles because you have that in your life. This is it: This is who I am. You can get all the way to the bottom because you're not blocked.
PG: That's exactly what comes through in your video, Audra: this luminous clarity.
AM: Well, for me, there is clarity and absolute honesty about how I participated in that video. Because I did try to kill myself. I was at the end of my rope. And I attempted suicide when I was at Juilliard. But what was waiting for me on the other side was this entire life. It was waiting for me even during that darkest time. You only have to look in my eyes to know it gets better � � because here I am. I was where you are, but here I am now. So that's where the clarity came from.
ZQ: I was walking in my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago, and a kid rode by on his bike. Then he circled back to me. He said: "I just want to let you know that I'm gay, and I know you're gay, too. I'm having a really hard time with my family, and you've helped me." We talked for, I don't know, 10 or 15 minutes. But for the rest of the day I was so deeply moved — and so grateful for what he had given me.
PG: I read an interview with Louis C. K. recently. He talks about how annoying it is when celebrities speak out on politics and social issues: We give them a microphone for one thing, and they use it for something else. I disagree. You?
ZQ: Look how many celebrities are using that microphone for utterly va pid, meaningless purposes.
PG: "Buy my ringtone."
ZQ: Totally. We're in a position where people listen to what we have to say. Like Audra said, I've had so many people in my life who represented something good, with so much integrity. I want to be part of that now.
AM: Michelle Obama once said something like: When you get through the door of opportunity, you don't slam it shut behind you. You reach back and help the next person through. When I do concerts, I always talk about Covenant House. People may go and learn more about it, give some money to an excellent organization. I don't see the bad in that.
ZQ: I don't want to impose my personal political beliefs on anyone. I'm not interested in that. It's not for me to tell you who to vote for. It's for me to say: I'm taking the initiative to learn about this person that I believe in. And I encourage you to do the same thing, whether it's my candidate or not.
AM: About 20 years ago, I had a friend who was just starting to make it big, and she was chatting with another friend and said, "Yeah, I have a photo shoot, and I have to go here, and I have to go there." And her really good friend said to her: "No! You need to go to a soup kitchen." That has never left my mind.
ZQ: When I was in the middle of the first "Star Trek" movie, I started getting caught up in the things that might come along with it: the press opportunities, what a franchise might do for my career. And I had that same awakening: I need to do something for someone else. So I went to this retirement community in my neighborhood once a week and spent a couple of hours visiting with people.
AM: I love talking with elderly people. Anyone who's made it to that age has a story.
PG: Let's end with diversity. You've both achieved great success. Do you still feel boxes around you: African-American woman, gay man?
AM: I've spent my whole career trying to stay out of any box that anyone could put me in. "I'm going to do a play now." "Now I'll do a musical." That was my instinct. So I don't feel boxed in. But African-American woman is part of my identity. I don't want to relinquish that — especially as a mother, helping my daughter find her identity. She's biracial, so she's just as much African-American as she is Caucasian. I want her to embrace herself in her entirety.
ZQ: After I came out in 2011, I gave a lot of interviews saying I've never worked more and how it hadn't adversely affected my career. And I believe that. But I also believe that I would have had more mainstream Hollywood opportunities if I were straight or didn't come out. I haven't allowed it to limit me, but I think th ere's an inherent resistance to gay men in Hollywood. Which isn't to take anything away from the mind-blowing progress since I got out of school.
PG: What kind of resistance?
ZQ: It's not explicit. It's more a matter of opportunities. Lists of actors being considered for roles that I have to fight to get onto or that I won't be on altogether. This isn't a complaint. I've come to accept my journey. It's just an observation. But what can you do? You keep doing the work.
AM: What I always say to students, especially African-American women or girls who ask, "How do I have the career you have?" I say: "First of all, you have to be you. You can't be me. There's already one of me. You're what' s unique." But I also say: Never say no to yourself. Because there are plenty of people who are going to say no to you. Don't you be one of them. Don't put yourself in a box. You knock down barriers wherever you can, even if it's in a tiny way.
ZQ: And don't forget the joy. It's in the work, whether in a tiny Off Broadway play or giant $200 million film. And then you can unplug your expectations and go: I got this. And other things will come — either for me or someone else. We're all part of the same continuum and seeing where we fit in, that's our privilege and our responsibility.
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