HOW MANY YOUNG ACTORS, let alone young black actors, would choose a gay movie as their first real introduction to the world? Regardless of one’s orientation, Hollywood, for all its left-leaning bloviation, is still homophobic—and pretty racist. Once upon a time, not so long ago, playing gay was a shortcut to either obscurity or an Oscar, depending on how well you died at the end of the film.
But Moonlight is not just any gay movie. And Trevante Rhodes is not just any young actor. He is a black man in 2017. And he is completely at home in his skin, obsidian dark and carrying the weight of America’s sins; in his sexuality—straight, if it matters, and it somehow always does; and within his body, powerful, gladiatorial, that of a…
