LGBTQ+ folks have continued to fight for representation across all forms of media — from books to television, movies, music, sports and more. Today, there are even more “out” queer identifying people in media than ever before, and some of the most famous hail from North Carolina.
Qnotes has created a list of 10 different Tar Heel queer icons from a wide array of fields, including music, literature, activism, acting and more.
Ariana DeBose
Broadway star and American actress Ariana DeBose was born in Wilmington on January 25, 1991, and has gone on to receive many notable awards, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.
DeBose is most known for her roles as Disco Donna in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical and Anita in West Side Story (directed by Steven Spielberg). She also went viral early in 2023 when she hosted the 76th British Academy Film Awards, where DeBose performed a freestyle rap dedicated to the female nominees.
Variety Magazine described the performance as “a little out of breath at some points,” and included lines like “Angela Bassett did the thing,” which went on to become a meme on social media sites like X (formerly Twitter) and Tik Tok.
Mabel Hampton
Mabel Hampton was a lesbian dancer during the Harlem Renaissance, though Hampton didn’t always call the Big Apple her home.
Hampton was born in Winston-Salem on May 2, 1902, and shortly after her birth, her mother died from poisoning. Hampton’s maternal grandmother took care of her until she was seven years old and her grandmother died of a stroke. Hampton then boarded a train heading to New York City, where she lived with her aunt and uncle for a short time before leaving after it came to light her relatives were abusing her.
In later years Hampton often performed in exclusively Black productions alongside some of the most iconic names of the Harlem Renaissance, including Gladys Bentley. Later in life, she joined the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City in the mid-1970s, where she provided artifacts and oral accounts for the collection. Hampton died from pneumonia on May 26, 1989 at St. Luke’s-Roosevely Hospital Center in Manhattan.
Laurel Lisa Holloman
Laurel Holloman is an American actress best known for her role as Tina Kennard in “The L Word”, a show about bisexual and lesbian women in West Hollywood. Holloman was born in Chapel Hill and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Performance Communication.
She later moved to Chicago to pursue acting, and eventually, Holloman landed the role of Tina. Holloman left her acting career to pursue painting, and she has been awarded for some of her pieces. She had a solo show at the Menier Gallery in London titled “The Innocents” in November 2015, and then Holloman’s first solo museum show “Everglow” — which was held in Amstelveen, Netherlands — took place over a month in 2016 in the Museum Jan Van der Togt.
Randy Jones
Randy Jones was born in Raleigh on September 13, 1952. He attended William G. Enloe High School and graduated in 1970. Jones is best known for his musical career as the cowboy in the Village People, a pop and disco group created by openly gay producer Jacques Morali inspired by clubgoers he often encountered at gay nightclubs in New York City’s East Village.
Each member of the band is meant to represent a popular gay archetype: a police officer/naval officer, a sailor, the “Indian,” a construction worker, a biker/leather man and a cowboy. Jones once recounted the group’s debut show, which featured a 12 person, all-male background dance team.
“We looked out at the audience and every guy had on that white polyester John Travolta suit, and every girl had Farrah Fawcett’s feathered hairdo,” he recounted.
Much of the group’s music embraced emblems of gay life in the 1970s, with such songs as “Fire Island” (the East Coast’s gay summer vacation spot); “San Francisco
(You’ve Got Me)”(an American city with one of the highest concentrations of queer residents), “Macho Man,” a popular gay male fantasy and subculture, and “YMCA,” a tongue-in-cheek poke at the gymnasium that has been frequently associated with casual male on male sexual encounters.
Clay Aiken
Clay Aiken rose to fame after he finished in second place in the popular singing competition “American Idol.” Aiken was born and raised in Raleigh, where he attended Leesville Road High School. He was very involved in choral groups in the Triangle, which was something Aiken found a passion for at an early age.
After his time on American Idol, speculation regarding Aiken’s sexual orientation became a hot topic in the celebrity gossip scene. Aiken denied the rumors at first, saying people were going to “believe what they want.” However, in 2008, Aiken came out in a People magazine exclusive interview.
Since then, Aiken has shifted into activism and politics and has run for government office twice. Before the U.S. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing same-sex marriages, Aiken spoke out against North Carolina Amendment 1, which banned marriage between people of the same sex and civil unions in the state.
Ashnikko
Ashnikko, whose real name is Ashton Nicole Casey, has taken the world by storm after her song “Stupid” featuring (Yung) Baby Tate went viral on Tik Tok in 2019. She was born in Oak Ridge, North Carolina — a community just outside of Greensboro — on February 19, 1996.
The singer recounted in an interview how her parents exposed her to multiple genres of music, ranging from country anthems to metal bands like Slipknot. However, Ashnikko found her passion for rap to be what ultimately inspired her to pursue a career in music.
Ashnikko began releasing music in 2016 but got her big break when her single “Stupid” gained popularity online. The song reached number one on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart, the Billboard Bubbling Under R&B/Hip-Hop chart and the Spotify Viral 50 chart, as well as received certified gold status.
Reneé Rapp
Reneé Rapp, who was born on January 10, 2000, in Huntersville, is a singing sensation and actress. Her most recent gig was a reprise of her role as Regina George in “Mean Girls: The Musical,” which hit theaters on January 12.
Rapp attended Hopewell High School in Huntersville, North Carolina, for three years before transferring to Northwest School of the Arts. She rose to fame when it was announced she would take over the role of Regina George in “Mean Girls: The Musical” on Broadway. She also dabbled in acting when she played Leighton Murray, the lesbian lead in the television series “The Sex Lives of College Girls.” She has released a full studio album titled “Snow Angel,” and recently, Rapp collaborated with Grammy award-winning artist Megan Thee Stallion on the sapphic-coded track “Not My Fault.”
One of the most iconic lines in the song, “Kiss a blonde, kiss a friend, can a gay girl get an amen,” was something Rapp wanted to make sure to include.
“I just wanted it to have that playful energy, and then ‘Can a gay girl get an amen?’ was really just what’s in my head,” she told them.us in an interview. “I want to say that in this song because I want to be abundantly clear about how I feel and be very out about it.”
KG MacGregor
KG MacGregor is a well-known and acclaimed author of lesbian fiction, was born October 22, 1955, in Wilmington. She attended Appalacian State University and graduated with a degree in education, going on to become a teacher.
She was fired from her teaching position after MacGregor was outed as a lesbian, which led to her attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and get her PhD in Media Research. MacGregor is known for her romance novels, with titles such as Just This Once, The Shaken Series and more.
Kevin Williamson
Kevin Williamson is a screenwriter, director and producer best known for his slasher series, the Scream franchise. Williamson was born in New Bern, but spent a lot of his childhood in Aransas Pass, Texas, near Corpus Christi, Texas. He returned to North Carolina for high school and graduated from East Carolina University with a degree in Theatre Arts.
The openly gay Williamson also created “Dawson’s Creek” and the supernatural drama television series “The Vampire Diaries.” “Dawson’s Creek” was known for being inspired by Williamson’s high school years, and in fact, the show was filmed in Wilmington and nearby Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach and Kure Beach.
Rickey Thompson
Rickey Thompson was born on February 6, 1996, in Raleigh and has gone on to become an influencer and internet personality.
Thompson attended Millbrook High School, where he participated in theater and was bullied for being gay. He found an outlet on YouTube to vent about his experiences with bullying, as well as talk about more light hearted topics Thompson was interested in. Kylie Jenner shared one of Thompson’s videos on her social media, and the Raleigh-native’s platform boomed overnight.