Kay Poyer Interview

Kay Poyer judges a book by its cover.

“And I have no shame about that,” she adds.

When she walks into a bookstore, a cover has to speak to her. It has to show creativity in its design, an attention to its message, and care in its execution. Otherwise, she won’t open it.

“But if I do like the cover, I’ll open to a random page and if I like the page, I’ll buy the book and figure out what it’s about along the way,” she clarifies.

Much is the same, I think, of Kay herself.

If you were to peruse her social platforms – clicking a random thumbnail with no prior context – you might find yourself perplexed by the plot. One day, she’s categorising men by their age group. Another, she’s discussing what it means to be a doll amongst a sea of twinky bottoms. The next? She’s promoting her new single “GOOD B1TCH DEMO”. Or, of an evening, you may find her in bed, ranting to the camera about In-N-Out, Substack, red flags, living in Texas, influencers—you get the point.

Trying to summarise her life in a blurb would be impossible. Her personal style, her hobbies, her interests—they’re all still being written. She’s figuring things out as she goes; no two pages the same.

Even so, every story has a beginning. And in Kay’s case, the playful, carefree cover she now possesses belies a far more complicated first chapter.

“Growing up, I was an only child. And I think my family dynamic was just really complicated. I think both of my parents were very interested in keeping privacy all around. I think we came off as a very picturesque, put together family to our community and when we would go to church. And girl, it was just a mess at home,” she shares with me over Zoom.

Her childhood was complicated: keeping up facades, hiding her true self, never quite able to voice what was always sitting on her chest. It festered into anxiety—something she didn’t even acknowledge until she was 14.

“Me and my best friend were walking to class, and I don’t know how it came up, but she pointed out that I must have anxiety, and I had never thought about that until then,” she explains.

Until the age of 22, her life was ruled by it—and she began to feel its effects.

“I had this really bad habit – like until I was in college – where if I would meet a new person and I thought they were cool and I wanted to be their friend, I’d start making up stupid lies about myself—I couldn’t even control it,” she says, half embarrassed, half laughing. “It was always something really stupid and specific, and it never made me look cooler. I think for my younger self to see me now, it would be a lot to take in—now that I don’t need to lie.”

“He’s still a boy,” Kay continues as she reflects on her younger self. “I’m trying to remember he’s still a boy at this stage—a lot hasn’t happened to him yet. I think all this would be overwhelming, but if you gave him like a couple weeks, he’d be like, ‘Okay, whatever.’”

It was that instinct—to push back, to resist, to test people—that ended up changing everything.

In her early 20s, Kay took a job at Pizza Hut. “Everybody I worked with was insane—they were all like ex-cons and fucked up all the time,” she adds. She wasn’t out by that point—still a character in the white-picket-fence dream her home life enrolled her in. “As I started working, I weirdly really enjoyed arguing with them and fighting with them constantly. It made me feel a lot more confident and I was just like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna keep doing this.’” The kitchen, she says, is where her voice really showed up. “By the time I quit that job, I was running that shit like the Navy—I whipped those boys into shape.”

But talking to her now, days away from swapping her home in Texas for a new life in New York City, it’s hard to picture her ever keeping quiet.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s complicated,” Kay replies. “I was just one of those kids—and girl, especially now I guess it’s a controversial thing to say, but you know when you meet a little ass kid and it’s like, ‘You’re clearly gay’… That was me. From a young age, like six years old, I was getting picked on for that.”

Her response at 11 years old was much the same as how she handled herself at Pizza Hut. “I came out as gay because there just wasn’t another option, I had to. And when I did that I started being mean back to the people who were mean to me. It was a devilish thing, but I guess from a young age, it kind of reinforced for me – even though it caused problems at home and with my family – that I had to learn from my own experience for myself. How it worked out for me was being open and saying, ‘So… What now?’ It was the best way for me to operate.”

And it paid off. The more Kay opened up, the more her life transformed. She came out as trans, stopped caring, surrounded herself with the right people, started dreaming and, inevitably, began posting.

At first, she didn’t think about it. It was just a pastime—a place to share the thoughts that couldn’t find space in her real life. But soon, her platform grew, with just shy of a million followers tuning in every time she clicked publish.

“It’s really weird,” she comments of her identity as a content creator. “But I’ve also had a really, really lucky and privileged experience as one.”

For Kay, there are many theories as to why the internet’s reception of her was kinder than that of her own surroundings.

“I’ve maybe gotten a total of like 10 death threats the entire time I’ve been online, which I feel had to be a record,” she quips, unironically. “Seriously though, even amongst straight creators, I think I’ve probably had one of the easiest times on the internet out of anybody.”

She credits her say-it-as-you-see-it attitude for the most part, able to be a “bitch” to her audience and be called a “queen” in return. But the magic in Kay’s content is much the same as the magic of Kay herself: never polished, never performative, never withholding. And that, more than ever, is what media currently craves.

Even so, with a following largely bolstered by the LGBTQ+ community, Kay struggles to think of herself as a representative.

“That becomes hard, because I have very conflicting ideas about that,” she elaborates. “I think being a very public trans woman is one thing, but I don’t know that I could ever say that I feel that I can represent the whole trans community. Because, girl, there are a lot of trans girls who do not like me and and I don’t like them and we’re very different from each other.”

It’s something she’s thought about more as of late, particularly after she interviewed Essence – one of the few close friends Kay’s made online – for Paper Magazine.

“We talked a lot about her being a representation of a Black trans woman taking up space, and I do think something like that is important, but then when I turn that on myself, I don’t know how to feel. I guess, ultimately, we all have very different jobs to do. And whenever I talk about the queer community or when I think of my own place for whatever it is I stand up for, I think it’s less important for me to say, ‘Hi, I represent this.’ And more important for me to look at all the young babies getting into the scene and growing up, getting into adult life for the first time and making it clear to them that shit is complicated, shit is never what you think it is. For me, representation is less of what I’m trying to do. And it’s more like telling people things they didn’t know or haven’t heard before,” she concludes.

It’s a fair statement—and one that feels fitting in a world where even representation comes with scrutiny.

“It’s kind of a very convenient to bolster your own celebrity,” Kay comments before adding, “and I won’t pretend that I don’t like people knowing who I am. I will not pretend that I don’t like doing interviews and being on camera and shit. But when I’m talking about politics or serious issues, I just think there are other ways I can contribute besides being a representation. Ultimately, I know that I am perceived as a trans woman and that I operate the internet as a trans woman, but I also know that a lot of the time, my audience are just seeing a white woman. So for representation, there are other girls who we can give that platform to. I can do other things.”

For Kay, the possibilities are endless. “I feel like this is such a shitty thing to say, but I don’t really have one specific dream. I don’t have a favourite colour. I don’t like having to pick a favourite food. I just wanna do whatever and try everything,” she explains.

Growing up, before the internet became her sounding board, Kay would find herself at a desk—either writing stories or training as a visual artist. As she grew online, it was her manager at the time who encouraged her to pick her pen back up.

“I want you to start writing every day so you get used to it,” he instructed her, with plans to write a screenplay together. From there, her friend and “Princess Baby Girl” on Substack, Safsa, urged her to share more of her work on the platform. “She urged me to start putting my writing on Substack, so I did it. Part of being an internet creator is that you have to be aware of what your brand is. But the fun thing is that you can have an entirely different ‘brand’ platform to platform.”

For Kay, she opts for eloquence on the page over outlandishness on screen—and yet, the outcome remains what audiences have grown to love her for. “In all media, my favourite feeling is when something is uncomfortable to the point that it’s raw, but it’s also kind of funny. I think horror, sadness and comedy all exist together—they’re like triplets,” she explains. 

As of right now, her writing leans more sad and contemplative, drawing from the psychological horror she finds herself drawn to. “I do think we’re in a very individualist – like, focused on the self – period with media right now,” she elaborates. “Almost everything that we’re seeing in theatres is remakes, sequels, prequels or biopics. I kind of exist in this giant pool of young amateur writers online who are swimming around in the muck on Substack. And we all also write about ourselves—I’m incriminated in this too. But I really of want to write as much as I can about other people. I think in film in particular, we’re missing a lot of that.”

To remedy that, Kay isn’t short of ideas.

Currently, she’s planning a video podcast with Essence, the pilot of which they’re shooting in April. “We’re kind of getting all the shit done for that right now. I hope we get green-lit for a whole season. With Essence and I together, something just happens. She’s kind of nits, she’s insane, but she’s just so fucking fun to be around and so fun to talk to. So I really do believe that a lot of good things will come from us working together more closely. But at this point, we still haven’t even filmed, so hopefully by the time people are reading this, we’ll have more news to share.”

Aside from sitting at the mic with Essence, Kay is also turning the lens on herself—resurrecting her theatre kid instincts for the occasional audition. Some, she admits, were “trash,” but persistence paid off, with Kay now booking her first role in a short film.

“Ultimately, I just want to do the whole experience, I just wanted to say yes and do it. If I enjoy the whole process, then I’ll keep pursing acting,” she says, excitement cutting through her southern drawl. “Right now, I really do like it. I love the girl I’m co-staring with, I love the script, and I think this is a great first role for me. I read her script and was like, ‘I totally get her.’”

The project is likely to premiere early next year—but Kay doesn’t mind the wait.

“I’m just kind of – in the most non-sexual way possible – an exhibitionist. There are a lot of things that people consider private business that I don’t think need to be. I feel like I’m very open to experiences—I really like weird things happening to me just for the sake of finding something out. I hope that that rubs off on people. I hope that they start trying to make their life a little more weird and nonlinear. As long as I feel like I’m operating off of my own principles and people are looking, I’m happy. I don’t really care what they think beyond that.”

For someone who built a following on instinct, contradiction, and saying the quiet part out loud, Kay doesn’t seem too interested in defining the story just yet.

For now, she’s still flipping pages.