Munroe Bergdorf: ‘The world is going to get queerer’

‘Sorry, I’m rambling!’ Munroe Bergdorf says apologetically. The activist, model, TV presenter and podcast host has just finished delivering another lengthy polemic via Zoom, in which she touches on everything from her MTV chat show ‘Queerpiphany’ to the lack of transgender representation in mainstream presenting gigs and the importance of diversity behind the camera as well as in front of it. We first met two days ago at Time Out’s ‘frantic-but-fun’ Pride cover photoshoot, four hectic, soy latte and Lucozade-fuelled hours encompassing three outfit changes, a fair bit of prowling around on the countertop at Stoke Newington mezcal joint Bar Doña and several smoke flares set off in a nearby children’s playground.

I don’t think it’s going to be this way for ever

Fresh from serving looks in front of an audience of primary school kids, Bergdorf was then whisked off to a catwalk show at Graduate Fashion Week, for which she is an ambassador. Next was a quick stopover in France, where she was appearing in a headline slot at Cannes Lions, discussing ‘what comes after the conversations we’re having about diversity and inclusion with the iconic June Sarpong’. And now, having barely had time to breathe, she’s setting the world to rights with me over Zoom.

It’s a relentless schedule, but if there’s one thing that’s very clear from our chat, it’s that Munroe Bergdorf is a pretty relentless kind of person.

Cutting through the noise

‘There's always been quite a lot of noise surrounding my career,’ Bergdorf says at one point during our conversation. But it’s probably fair to say that making noise is what first launched the Londoner into the mainstream.

Graduating from Brighton University with an English degree, Bergdorf spent three years working in fashion PR before beginning her transition at 24 years old. A co-founder of long-running QTBIPOC club night Pxssy Palace, she had been DJing alongside modelling gigs for several years when, in 2017, she landed the biggest campaign of her career, becoming the first openly transgender face of major beauty brand L’Oréal’s UK branch. Despite the fanfare with which Bergdorf’s groundbreaking role was announced, the excitement was short-lived. A few weeks later, Bergdorf took to Facebook to vent about systemic racism in the aftermath of the heavily publicised white supremacist rallies that had recently taken place in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her comments ended up making tabloid headlines, and she was unceremoniously dropped by the brand.

With her name cropping up in incendiary news stories and opinion columns around the world, Bergdorf was subjected to a torrent of racist, transphobic and misogynistic abuse online. It was traumatic, but she fought the urge to shrink into the shadows and wait for it to blow over. Instead, she kept talking. She patiently and painstakingly defended her points while being shouted down on evening news and breakfast telly slots. She wrote broadsheet columns about the marginalisation she had experienced and became the LGBTQ+ editor of Dazed Magazine. She presented ‘What Makes a Woman’, a Channel 4 documentary exploring changing attitudes towards gender, which saw her undergo major facial feminisation surgery at a clinic in Belgium, debate trans rights with gender-critical feminists and chat to German neurologists researching the transgender brain. And undeterred from pursuing modelling, she continued to make history by fronting fashion and beauty campaigns for the likes of Mulberry, Uniqlo and Calvin Klein.

Persistence pays off

By the time the pandemic forced her to hit pause, Bergdorf had an honorary doctorate from Brighton University, a Campaigner of the Year gong from the British LGBT+ Awards and a role with UN Women. She’d already cemented herself among the most influential trans rights activists on the planet. With so much under her belt, you’d think she might want to slow down. Yet in many ways the reopening of the world has been the busiest phase of her career so far. There was a Time cover in October 2020, a Gay Times Honours List spot last December and a history-making appearance as Cosmopolitan’s first transgender cover star for the magazine’s fiftieth anniversary at the beginning of this year.

I love that we’re in this position where a Black trans woman and a Black drag queen have their own show on MTV

Last autumn, she launched a Spotify Original podcast, ‘The Way We Are’, in which she chats to a host of mostly queer celeb friends. ‘We go on a deep dive throughout my guests’ lives,’ Bergdorf explains, ‘and talk a little bit about the adversities they have faced, how they got through this and how to look at it as a lesson.’ Renewed for a second season, new episodes of the hit title are currently dropping each Monday, with recent guests including ‘Heartstopper’ actress Yasmin Finney, ‘Queer Eye’s delightfully flamboyant Jonathan Van Ness and plus-size model and activist Tess Holliday.

Then there’s a hosting gig on MTV’s online chatshow ‘Queerpiphany’ alongside Welsh ‘Drag Race UK’ alumna Tayce. Premiering at the end of 2021, with Season 2 promised ‘very soon’, it’s an eminently bingeable and thoroughly joyful watch in which LGBTQ+ guests talk about the pop-culture moments which constituted early queer awakenings for them, from radio DJ Nick Grimshaw spilling about his early obsession with Madonna’s 1991 tour documentary, to Gen Z author Florence Given reflecting on the teaches of Peaches. ‘The great thing about working on “Queerpiphany” is that it really practises what it preaches,’ Bergdorf explains. ‘The creators are queer. The majority of the crew are queer, and women. And working with Tayce is amazing. I love that we’re in this position where a Black trans woman and a Black drag queen have their own show on MTV. That’s nothing that I saw when I was growing up. It’s great.’

Alongside all of this, Bergdorf has been writing her memoir. Due for release in February next year by Bloomsbury, who won an 11-way bidding war for the publication rights, ‘Transitional’ documents the ways in which we all undergo constant transitions throughout our lives. ‘It's largely a memoir, but it also has a lot of social commentary in it,’ Bergdorf says. ‘I talk about what it was like to grow up identifying as gay under Section 28 and beginning my transition the year that the Equalities Act passed, which is really topical, considering that a lot of Conservatives want to overturn it.’

I grew up around drag queens, in gay bars and did the whole nightlife thing for so long

‘It’s very honest and raw, and it’s taken me nearly four years to write, because it's been quite painful at times to talk about a lot of the things that I’ve been through,’ she says. ‘I hope that it shows different sides to me, and gives people a little bit more understanding about who I am as a person, and who I was before all of the noise. I’m starting to feel quite accomplished now that it’s done. It’s been really hard to write, though.’

Burnout and beyond

As plenty of people would point out, all of Bergdorf’s many achievements have come at a time in which trans and gender-nonconforming people have faced an increasingly hostile environment in the UK. Anti-trans rhetoric seems to be becoming ever more common in the British media across the whole political spectrum. Transphobic hate crimes continue to rise at an alarming rate, with reported incidents quadrupling between 2015 and 2020 according to one BBC report. All the while, urgent healthcare is becoming increasingly difficult to access, with the government continuing to stall on promised reforms to the Gender Recognition Act and deciding to exclude trans people from its proposed ban on conversion therapy.

It’s a landscape that can, at times, feel overwhelmingly bleak. So it’s easy to see how, towards the end of last year, Bergdorf was beginning to feel its impact. In February, she took to Instagram to address her recent silence on social media, sharing with her followers that she had been operating ‘in a place way past the point of burnout’.

‘Truth is, for the past 5+ years I threw everything I had into activism, I gave it absolutely everything that I physically, mentally and spiritually had in me and then some,’ she shared. ‘Living in a constant state of red alert and hypervigilance has taken its toll on my mental wellbeing, to the point that in December I had a complete breakdown, which led to an in-patient stay in a rehab facility seeking treatment for complex PTSD, anxiety and depression.’

In the wake of all this, Bergdorf is more aware than ever about needing to look after herself as she continues to flit between photoshoots, podcast recordings, speaking engagements and more at a punishing rate. ‘I’m very boring, really,’ she says when pressed about what she does for fun. ‘I grew up in Soho. I was there from the time that I was old enough to go into clubs and things like that. So I really grew up around drag queens, in gay bars and did the whole nightlife thing for so long. Now I just love doing really wholesome things.

‘I love my friends so fiercely, and I just love spending time with them and doing really low-key things. I live in east London on the river and I love waking up and the first thing that I see is greenery and water. I like feeling connected to nature. I like travelling and my boyfriend lives in the south of France, so I spend a lot of time there.’

Bergdorf took up equine therapy at the beginning of the year. ‘That really helped me reconnect because I love animals,’ she says. ‘Whenever I’m around animals, I always feel a calmness.’ She tells me about her many pets, which include a pair of hairless cats named after the pioneering trans activist Marsha P Johnson and queer supermodel Gia Carangi.

Staying motivated

Despite the many ups and downs of her career so far, the energy Bergdorf has for the causes she believes in is evident, so much so that she has a tendency to fly off into impassioned speeches at the slightest of prompts during our chat. How does she remain so motivated? ‘By reminding myself that [my detractors] are fighting a losing battle,’ she says. ‘The world is always going to get queerer, it’s going to get more diverse, it’s going to get browner. We’re really confronting a lot of the things like toxic masculinity, like gender roles, and how ultimately rigid identity doesn’t serve anyone.’

‘Though it may be difficult now, I don’t think it’s going to be this way for ever,’ she continues. ‘We just need to look at the strides that the gay male population has made in the last 50 years. The trans community is obviously a couple of decades behind the gay community, but the way that time moves forward is an inclusive one. I’m forward-thinking and future-facing rather than getting bogged down about the noise that a small minority of people are making. I just see it as a countdown, really.’

‘Queerpiphany’ with Munroe Bergdorf and Tayce is on MTV UK’s YouTube channel.