Danny Beard on Pride Month: We grow up in a world that isn’t meant for us but it gets better
- ontargetmedia8
- Jun 27
- 4 min read
The Celebrity Big Brother star speaks to Sara Keenan about his journey in drag and hopes for the LGBT+ community in the future.
Celebrity Big Brother star Daniel Curtis – best known as drag artist Danny Beard – says, “For so long, I was afraid to be myself”.
The 32-year-old was voted runner-up in the latest series of the ITV reality show behind winner Coronation Street actor, Jack P Shepherd.
Speaking ahead of Pride Month, held every June, Beard says: “Growing up as a queer person, we watch Disney films with a prince and a princess. We never watch Disney films with two princesses or two princes or a transgender prince.
“So although the world isn’t built for us – when you truly step into yourself it gets better. Never be anything other than yourself.”
It’s a lesson, Beard – who uses he/they pronouns when out of drag – wants the younger people to take away from his journey.
“Being authentically you will get you to where you want to be and you need to not be afraid of it. For so long I was afraid to be myself. I didn’t have friends and I wasn’t liked,” says the singer and performer, who won BBC Three’s RuPaul’s Drag Race UK in 2022.
The CBB appearance was a chance for viewers to get to know Beard out of drag.
Although he had hoped to win, he says: “To leave in second place and do something for the first time in my life without a pair of boobs and a wig on – for me, the whole thing was cloud nine.”
Adding: “I have done the radio before out of drag but no one can see me on the radio. So CBB felt great. I don’t want to keep talking about my childhood but there were times when I didn’t fit in at all. So to then go on a national TV show and people to like me for me was amazing.
“I understand why people like my drag because I’ve worked hard on that for over 10 years. When someone congratulates me on a work achievement, I can get on board with that. But to have that same level of love, if not more for just being me – a part of me feels like I don’t deserve it.”
Beard says he started dressing in drag for extra money, while he was working as a DJ. “The drag queen I worked with got paid £180 and I got paid £80, so I wanted the extra £100 and that’s my honest answer.
“But I also love drag. I love the flamboyancy, the costume of it all and the ridiculousness. After that I was getting into clubs for free, and I began hosting the club nights and being paid to be in the clubs. Then I started singing and hosting and this little snowball effect happened. It actually brought me 360 degrees back to all of things I dreamed of doing as a child.
“Drag was the gateway to my dreams,” he says. “It was the gateway to the armour and the mask to get me where I wanted to be. It is such a magical art form and it’s always been at the forefront of our community. Drag can be anything you want it to be and that’s the power it has.
“You only have to look through history at how many drag queens have influenced, helped, affected and supported our community to know how inherently political being a drag queen is. I’m very privileged that I’m even here talking to you as a drag queen.”
Pride Month, which coincides with the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, honours the progress made – and yet to be made – for LGBT+ people everywhere, and Beard says it’s more important now than ever to celebrate.
“Pride Month is incredible because it’s such a massive visible thing,” he says. Visibility is important. It’s tougher for parts of our community now than it has been for a very long time. ”
This year Pride comes soon after a landmark ruling in April from the UK Supreme Court stating that the terms ‘woman’, ‘man’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer exclusively to biological sex. Equalities minister Bridget Phillipson announced that transgender women should use toilets according to their biological sex.
Beard says history is repeating itself. “When we look back at the Eighties, Nineties and the Aids epidemic, we look back at that homophobia in such disgust.
“My dream and my hope is in my lifetime, I get to look back at this wave of transphobia in the same disgust to the people that are against our trans siblings right now. They are going to go down on the wrong side of history.
“Going forward, my wish is that people stop being so obsessed with trans people and what they are doing in the toilet,” he says. “People need to focus on real issues like women’s actual safety and violence against women in this country.
“There’s a lot of things wrong with this country, but listen, I’m a drag queen in a pair of heels who’s been on a reality show – I’m not a politician – however, if we all just started giving each other a little chance and got to know each other a little bit more, it would help a lot.
“If you’ve got an opinion on a trans person, maybe go out and meet a trans person – get to know one. If there’s one thing I’m taking from this little micro experience of CBB is if you give everyone five minutes of your time, you’ll find that we all have got a lot more in common than we think.
“If we started thinking like that, we’re going to have a little bit more empathy for each other and then a little bit nicer to each other.”
