Cinderella's Billy Porter: "Magic has no gender"

The Pose star says his role as Cinderella's Fab G is a reminder that just because something's always been done a certain way, it doesn't mean it has to continue

By Marah Eakin | September 3, 2021 | 3:00pm

Film Features Cinderella

Photo: Amazon Prime Video

As Fab G, the proto-godmother of Amazon Prime Video’s new Cinderella adaptation, Pose star Billy Porter is the former butterfly charged with whipping Camila Cabello into shape. Much has been made about how Porter’s gender-bending turn as the film’s once-godmother strikes a blow for fairy tale diversity, and it’s something Porter hopes carries into other magical realms. As he tells us in the video below, “My hope is that “magic has no gender” begins to be the law of the land. It’s like when the Star Wars universe was all white, or any magical universe was all white for centuries. This is magic. This is actually a place for inclusion. This is a space where we can teach what it looks like to be inclusive because magic has no race or gender.”

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Porter said a big part of becoming Fab G was the film’s costuming, which pulled on notes of his character’s butterfly past while also subverting traditional gender norms. As fans of Porter’s classically camp style know, Porter’s never shied away from an over the top look. “It’s never been about me wearing a dress,” he says. “I want to wear what I want when I want to wear it. It’s about the masculine and the feminine.” Porter notes his character isn’t just clad in a big, poofy traditional ballgown, but rather is wearing pants, plus a voluminous coat that he likens to what“a [Pentecostal] first lady would wear at a church anniversary.” “When you look at it closely,” he says, “it’s everything thrown into the pot, and that creates the magical Fab G.”

Cinderella is theaters and on Amazon Prime today, Friday, September 3. You can read our review of the movie, which we called “a comedic pop confection aimed squarely at preteens,” right here.