Texas native John Cameron Mitchell feels a kinship to Joe Exotic having grown up in homophobic culture.
“He’s from that same generation that I am, from the same part of the country,” Mitchell — who portrays former zookeeper in the upcoming Peacock series “Joe vs. Carole” — tells Page Six. “I know what it’s like to hate yourself, to be told it’s better to be a murderer than for a boy to be like a girl. He’s still stuck there.”
Mitchell admits that he had an inherited hatred of himself and his femininity.
“I had a hatred of my femininity even more than my gayness,” he says. “I wasn’t even attracted to guys who were feminized, I was so masculinized.”
The actor explains that it wasn’t until he started playing Hedwig — a genderqueer East German rock musician — in the groundbreaking musical “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” that he began to change.
“I let go of that [self-hatred] and began to enjoy my feminine side and was attracted to guys who were comfortably feminine,” he tells us. “It was through performances, playing roles that were not me, that I found myself.”
Mitchell, 58, takes on the role of a lifetime in the upcoming miniseries “Joe vs. Carole,” dramatizing the vicious decade long feud between GW Zoo owner Joe Exotic and a big-cat rescuer Carole Baskin, which culminated in an attempted murder plot.
Mitchell, seen here in a still for the upcoming “Joe vs. Carole,” says he felt sympathy for Joe Exotic.PeacockThe “Shrill” star admits that he actually really liked playing Joe.
“I didn’t expect to,” Mitchell says. “It’s like playing Richard III when you read it you go, ‘What a repellent character,’ but then you go deeper and you go, ‘This guy was a hunchback and he was lashing out and getting his revenge on the world,’ and that’s what it felt like [with Joe].
Exotic a.k.a Joe Maldonado-Passage is currently behind bars.Netflix“So the deeper I went with him and found out about the trauma he had experienced … He and his boyfriend were subjected to a lot of homophobia, his suicide attempt when he came out, his husband dying of AIDS, all of those things that were not really touched upon in the documentary series humanized him for me.”
“You cannot play a monster,” he adds. “You have to play a human who does terrible things and also does good things. And he did have a heart and in the beginning, there was a sense of, I want to help these animals, I want to help these people. But it curdled into megalomania, paranoia, and ultimately attempted murder. But what a buffet to play all those things!”
Mitchell starred in the film adaptation of his musical “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”Sophie GiraudMitchell hasn’t heard from Exotic a.k.a Joe Maldonado-Passage, who is currently serving a 21-year prison sentence after he was convicted of attempting to hire two different men to kill Baskin.
Mitchell stars opposite Kate McKinnon in “Joe vs. Carole.”Rob Kim“He did post something,” the “Girls” actor dryly notes. “‘Mitchell’s gonna make me look like a flaming fag when I’m just a hardworking gay male.'”
“Yeah, I’m just lazing around here honey,” he says with a laugh. “My response was a painted nails emoji. It’s like, girlfriend please c’mon.”
“Joe vs. Carole” begins streaming on Peacock, March 3.
