This interview appeared in the August 2018 issue of Gay Times.

Photography Anna Friemoth 
Fashion and Words Maxwell Losgar 

Last autumn — just months after graduating from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts — Isaac Cole Powell made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning revival of Once on This Island. This spring he signed with New Pandemics — a modeling agency dedicated to increasing LGBTQ visibility within the fashion industry. And this summer, the 23-year-old New York City transplant from Greensboro, North Carolina appears in season two of the Indie Series Award-winning web series Indoor Boys as he continues to earn his stripes in the concrete jungle he now calls home. 

You recently posted an op-ed about ethnicity on Instagram. What prompted that dialogue? 

That day I had two people DM me and ask where I was from. Like, “really from.” And that question has always given me pause. It makes me so uncomfortable. It’s not that I’m ashamed of where I come from, or who I am, my discomfort is rooted in the way we try to define other people. As soon as someone knows my racial identity they automatically make assumptions, and I don’t like that.