I scream, you scream, we all scream for Jasmin Savoy Brown!
Sure, Brown may have started acting in 2012, but the last two years especially have proven she is the queer scream queen we’ve been waiting for, and can’t get enough.
Whether it’s portraying queer love (with a side of cannibalistic horror) on Showtime’s Yellowjackets or sending chills down our spine in the Scream franchise, Brown has quickly become one of Hollywood’s most sought-after stars when it comes to terrifying film and TV.
Which is funny, given she wasn’t always drawn to horror.
“I was never interested in horror because it was just so straight and white,” she recently told Elle. “That’s just not interesting to me, aside from my one white woman show a year, which was Big Little Lies and then The White Lotus.”
Fortunately for us, Brown’s on-screen characters are often queer, which of course is refreshing in a sea of straight, white people. But more intriguing is the fact that her character’s LGBTQ+ identities are never made out to be that big of a deal.
“Mindy’s (her character in Scream) queerness has nothing to do with her character arc, and no one cares. It’s such a big deal, because it’s not a big deal at all,” Brown said in the same interview with Elle. “I love the idea that some people who would not normally interact with a character like myself are now meeting Mindy in that franchise and hopefully in a way that is pleasant for them.”
This nonchalant attitude about being LGBTQ+ also applies to her personal life.
“I never came out,” she shared with Out back in 2019. “I just kind of started posting pictures of my girlfriend and I a few years ago. And I knew that when I did that, it would hinder some opportunities and was scary, but the way that I thought about it was, ‘Do I want to work with those jerks anyway? Do I wanna be on a show or in a film with homophobic people?’ No! So if I miss out on that job, that’s fine. I will get better ones. Obviously I’ll never know what I don’t know. I don’t know who’s passed over me or discarded me for being who I am, but that’s fine, because I’ve found myself in great company.”
But make no mistake about it. Brown isn’t just talking the talk, she’s always walking the walk. Case in point: during the peak of the pandemic, she had a lot of time to reflect on her identity, and how it influenced her life.
“I’m mixed-race – my mom is white and my dad is Black – and I grew up in an all-white space in Oregon,” she said in an interview with Wussy earlier this year. “My relationship to my racial identity has been complicated because of that, and it’s taken intention and effort to change that.”
Which started with looking at her own “communities and relationships,” including her business relationships.
“I looked at my professional team – my agents, managers, lawyers, business manager – and thought, oh my god, my team is really white!” She explained to the pub. “White people are in a lot of positions of power in the industry, but I plan to be a very successful, rich, money-making performer, and I don’t want to make a bunch of white people rich.”
So she got rid of them, duh!
“I kept the best and the brightest of the white people,” she joked, and assembled a new team, comprised of queer people and women of color.
Like we said, scream queen after our own heart.
Thank you for all you are doing for the queer community, Jasmin! Your candor, and ability to be so effortlessly cool and queer at the same time gives us plenty to scream about (in a good way). We are beyond excited to have you on this year’s Pride50. Now how do we get you on the next season of The White Lotus?!
Welcome to Queerty’s Pride50. We’re celebrating the members from our community who are responsible for some of the most inspiring and extraordinary moments for LGBTQ people over the last year. See all the honorees
