Murray Hill calls himself "Mr. Showbiz." In addition to playing Fred Rococo in the HBO series, Somebody Somewhere, Hill hosted drag king shows, queer cabarets and comedy shows — and he performs his own act.
"I started producing and creating shows because this is my mantra … if you don't see yourself represented, go out and represent yourself," Hill says.
Hill grew up in New England, raised by a conservative Catholic mother who wanted an obedient, feminine daughter, and a father who, he says, largely ignored him.
"It was just incongruous from day one," he says. "And so I left a place where I was not welcome, or cared for or seen, and went to college. But it wasn't until I got to New York and found my people and the city, that I actually was like, 'Oh, I can actually be this person.'"
Initially, "Murray Hill" was a stage persona, but over time the name came to represent who he really is: "Today, here I am, my full, authentic self, and I feel like this is who I was when I was born," Hill says.
He says he spent years separating himself from his traumatic childhood, but more recently, Hill felt a need to acknowledge and stop suppressing those painful memories. His new memoir is Showbiz! My Life as a Middle-Aged Man.
"The book started off as me wanting to do service for the community and for the trans kids, because a lot of the feedback that I received from being Fred Rococo was from parents that have trans kids, community members [who said], 'You were such a good role model, you showed my child that you can have a full career,'" Hill says. "I felt a little disingenuous in that the world and the fans and my friends and my people have only seen the end result of the struggle."
Interview highlights
On his Murray Hill persona
The persona of Murray Hill has like two lanes — one is to take up space to represent a community and a gender that hasn't had equal representation at all within the queer community and within society — still the same today. So that's the public piece to it, but the personal piece of this, Terry, is that I always felt like I was a boy. I grew up thinking I was the tomboy. And then society and my family is like, no, you're a girl. And then in, I think, fourth grade, I dressed up like Schneider from One Day at a Time. And nobody batted an eye. I showed up to school with a mustache, cigarettes rolled in my hair, the tool belt, and everything. But that didn't feel like drag to me.
On his real friendship with Bridget Everett, which became the basis of Somebody Somewhere
Fred is this kind of paternal figure and is creating community and inviting people into it and propping them up. Bridget, we were bosom buddies, friends, for a long time. And we both were kind of othered in very different ways. So she got to New York and wanted to be in the theater community and a singer like a traditional theater singer. And I was in the queer community. But when we found each other, we related on [being misfits] and we instantly bonded. And the gay community took her in, Terry, with wide open arms. … But the gay community has a huge history of loving and supporting strong, powerful women with a voice. So Bridget became part of this misfit choir practice community, [and] that's the very basis of Somebody Somewhere. So a lot of people said that me and Jeff [Hiller] and Bridget were so real on the show, that the show was so authentic.
On the difference between himself and the character he played in Somebody Somewhere
Fred Rococo is me dialed down to like a 2, with 10 being the highest. I have a very big personality … Fred was more calm than I am, but what we did share was enormous heart and wanting to connect with people through our heart and not how we identify and not through our circumstances. Fred is like me with bad purple clothing, no mustache, and kind of subtle. ...
On forgiving his mother on her deathbed
Before Somebody Somewhere came out, this was like the week before, I went to see her in hospice. And the woman that has taken up so much space in my mind and in my life as being essentially a monster was helpless, vulnerable … So she felt like a completely different person. And the way that I felt about her in that room was how I feel about every single other person in my life, empathy. It wasn't the angry mother or the abusive person … I saw a woman that has been so tough as nails her entire life, finally, in the last few days, let her guard down. And it was incredibly profound. In that moment, I was sitting next to her, holding her hand and I said to myself, "I forgive you."
It's not even that she did the best that she could — she could have done better, for sure. That's not an excuse … but hurt people hurt people.
On not feeling represented in '80s drag culture
So that's when the epiphany was: What is on the other side of this gender spectrum? That's where I need to go.Murray Hill
I looked around and I was like, "Holy crap, there's no lesbians here. There's no drag kings here. There's no butches." It was all drag queens and gay men. So I really didn't see anybody like me. So that's when the epiphany was: What is on the other side of this gender spectrum? That's where I need to go. … A day later, I went and looked at a magazine … and there was a listing for a drag king pageant at the Hershey Bar. So I had my big Pentax camera with a huge flash and I told the door person I was from The Village Voice and that I was reporting on the pageant and they let me in.
It wasn't campy like the drag queens in Boston or Wigstock that I had photographed. It didn't have the humor. … It was almost very serious. It was very masculine. It was almost more about passing. I was mesmerized by it, and I took these photos from these early pageants of these drag kings, and my mind was working overtime. … So I really saw a window there. … [With] '70s performance art, the major motto was "the personal is political," so I jumped on the other side of the camera, and I became what I did not see.
On feeling the impact of Trump's anti-trans rhetoric
I've been around for a while. It's never been great for us, and it's never great for the queer community. I think there was a little bit of hope that came in with the Obama years and with Biden. But since then, it has gone completely reverse to a point that's so absurd and so hateful and so divisive and cruel that I can't help but feel it in my own life, but I also feel very protective of the young kids who grew up with Obama that didn't think that they were degenerates and weren't stripped of basic human rights constantly, like every day there's something else. So I feel for these kids that we finally got to a place where we were going to live [and] let live, and then also have policies and laws that would ensure equal rights. And now that's gone. So it's mind blowing to me from a societal perspective and from a personal. I definitely feel on a daily basis that there is a target on my back.
[But] it doesn't impact how I present. ... I'm not gonna hide and I'm gonna bow down. I am gonna take up space, represent myself and the community and show people … that I am just like you. Because I do feel, Terry, that it's my social responsibility to be out there even more. And that's the message: We're here, we're not going anywhere, and there's nothing to be afraid of, people.
Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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