Billy Dee Williams Comes Out as Gender-Fluid in Interview

In a few weeks’ time, Billy Dee Williams will return to the role of Lando Calrissian in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It’s the first time Williams has played the character on film since The Empire Strikes Back; Donald Glover played a younger version of the character in 2018’s Solo. In a recent interview, the 82-year-old opened up about something unexpected.

Out reports that Williams came out as gender fluid in a conversation with Esquire, noting that he uses multiple pronouns when referring to himself. (Alternately: that she uses multiple pronouns when referring to herself.) “I say ‘himself’ and ‘herself,’ because I also see myself as feminine as well as masculine,” Williams told the magazine.

The reaction from fans of the actor and of the Star Wars series has been overwhelmingly positive, with Entertainment Tonight collecting a good cross-section of the responses to Williams’s news.

This caps a host of news that expanded the way many people viewed both Williams and Williams’s most famous character. Last year, Solo screenwriter Jonathan Kasdan confirmed that Calrissian is pansexual, a take on the character that Glover supported wholeheartedly.

Will this news frustrate the more reactionary element of the Star Wars fanbase? Almost certainly. The word “schadenfreude” comes to mind as a response.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…