Harvey Fierstein is sitting here bleeding to death, he announces. “I got taken down by a rose bush earlier,” the playwright, actor and activist explains in his gloriously gravelly voice. “It could have been a raspberry bush. Gardening is much more dangerous than quilting.”
It is one aside among many during a discursive interview with the Guardian that includes his fears of fascism in America, why heterosexual men are a “bunch of assholes” and the time he sat with Donald Trump at a gay wedding.
But first there is quilting. Fierstein began about 20 years ago, inspired by craft shows on the HGTV channel that he fondly recalls as “hot glue heaven”, and made about a quilt a year. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown and, with “nobody else to talk to”, he turned to his sewing machine in earnest and found a new community in a local quilt shop. He is now up to about 80 or 90 quilts.
“I started experimenting more and more and found that people like quilts a lot better than paintings,” Fierstein, 73, observes via Zoom from his home in Ridgefield, Connecticut. “If you give somebody a painting they have to hang it on the wall if you come over for dinner. But at least the dog can sleep on the quilt.”
The fruit of his labour is his first exhibition of handmade quilts, You Made That? The Quilting Adventures of Harvey Fierstein, at the Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center in Ridgefield from Friday to Sunday.
Fierstein was one of the first out gay celebrities in the US and is best known for his Tony award-winning stage work on Hairspray, La Cage Aux Folles, Newsies, Kinky Boots and Torch Song Trilogy as well as various film roles. But quilting represents a return to his roots in the visual arts: he graduated from the High School of Art and Design and received a degree in painting from the Pratt Institute.
“That’s what I was supposed to be doing,” he says. “This theatre thing is like a side gig: it’s what I do when I can’t get work as an artist. As a child I went to Disney studios and saw the artists working. That’s what I thought I was going to do and this whole writing thing was sort of a mistake.”
Fierstein views the upcoming public display in a tiny museum in what he dubs “a small fictional town in Connecticut” as an opportunity to “figure out whether, besides keeping the dog warm, this is something that’s worth doing. It’s also very American as we try and cling to America as we’re being killed by that soulless piece of crap. We have to hang on.”
This is a reference to the current occupant of the White House. One of Fierstein’s deceptively beautiful quilts is a condemnation of fascism, featuring two black skeletons giving Nazi salutes above a kneeling figure in striped pyjamas, against a backdrop of yellow stars and pink triangles like those that Jews and gay people were forced to wear during the Holocaust.
Growing up Jewish in Brooklyn, with acquaintances who had concentration camp tattoos on their arms, he developed a deep awareness of intolerance. “Antisemitism was something that I was used to but, having lived through the 60s with the civil rights struggle and then the 70s with the gay struggle, you keep thinking we’ve moved past this.
“But it’s in us. Prejudice is somewhere in us. It’s built into us for safety. All animals see another of their kind and find safety in that and it’s something we have to fight. It’s always been an undercurrent. I wanted to make an expression of that. If you look at the quilt, I did the background, the Jewish stars and the pink triangles, in very pretty colours. It doesn’t announce itself in an ugly way.”
Fierstein moves up a few gears as he contemplates the toxic stew of Trump’s America: draconian crackdowns on undocumented immigrants, rising antisemitism and political violence, a primal desire to revel in ignorance and turn back the clock.
“There are people that actually think that what’s going on, arresting people and pulling them out of their jobs, is something good. I am shocked when I see people on television saying, ‘Well, he promised to clean up the swamp and that’s what he’s doing.’ It’s all so frightening if you have any idea of history.
“This war against the left: I believe there’s something very dark there. I believe it’s people being too lazy to want to do the work. They love Donald Trump because he has no idea about anything. He’s your Uncle Paul who comes over for dinner and you just have to listen to him and bite your tongue because he knows absolutely nothing. That’s why these people love him; he’s an idiot; he’s just like them.”
Fierstein wishes Trump supporters would come to their senses. “When people tell me they’re pro-Trump, I say, do you know him? Because I do. I’ve been to a gay wedding and sat with him at a table in a gay wedding. Have you? I’ve had business meetings with the man. Have you? I know him. I’m telling you, he’s nothing but a thief and a fraud.”
The gay wedding in question was talent manager Richie Jackson’s marriage to theatre producer Jordan Roth in Manhattan in 2012. Roth’s father, Steven, was a friend of Trump. Fierstein recalls: “Donald was there looking absolutely miserable, didn’t even bring any of the 15 wives or girlfriends or underage children with him.
“When they tell me they’re pro-him, I say, if you met him, you wouldn’t be. The ones who are so weak want to be hugged by somebody strong, just get into his circle and love that. It’s that papa thing. Hitler had it. All those guys have.”
Fierstein made waves in March when he denounced Trump’s takeover of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, which included a declared intention to ban drag shows. Fierstein noted this would mean La Cage aux Folles and many of his other shows could not be performed there.
He says: “I love the Kennedy Center – I’ve performed there – but no, I won’t go near anything of Trump. He went to see Les Mis, saying this was his favorite musical, and didn’t know the difference between the hero and the villain. How stupid do you have to be to say this is my favorite musical? At least tell the truth.”
Trump installed a loyalist, Ric Grenell, an out gay man, as president of the Kennedy Center. “He proudly says, ‘I am a gay, married man.’ Who got you those rights, you piece of shit, you lowlife little creep … Who got you the right to get married, you fuckface?”
Fierstein sees LGBTQ+ rights under siege once more. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order mandating that federal agencies recognise only two sexes – male and female – based on biological classification at birth, rejecting gender identity as a separate concept. Another order was aimed at cutting federal support for gender-affirming care for minors.
Again Fierstein does not mince words: “The president of the United States announces there are only two sexes in the world! Well, you better call that God you say you believe in because there’s hermaphrodites, there’s all sorts of things in the end, not just in human beings but in all species. How stupid can you be? Sit down before you make a statement like that and look it up.
“On Facebook I put up a picture of a statue from ancient Rome of a hermaphrodite. What are you talking about, you asshole? They’ve been around forever. Homosexuals have been around forever. This is a natural part of who we are.
“But no, they have this Bible: he can sell them but he’s never read one. What’s your favorite quote of the Bible? ‘Oh, I love it all. I love it all. I read it every day.’ You don’t even read your own briefings every day. They had to simplify it for you, you piece of crap.”
Fierstein is dismayed by the law firms and media companies bending the knee to Trump because of selfishness and desire to make more money. He unleashes his frustrations at one group in particular.
“I am not an incredibly prejudiced person but, when it comes to heterosexual men, I don’t get them. They’re a bunch of assholes. There are so few heterosexual men that I know that I look up to. You can’t count on them for anything other than their own self-interest. There are some good ones – I mean, I’m not that prejudiced – but if we took all the heterosexual men out of Congress for two years and see what happens … or the ones who pretend to be heterosexual.”
And does Fierstein expect to live to see America’s first out gay president? “I’m very old,” he muses. “I’ve lived through Ronald Reagan never saying the word Aids. When Obama first raised his hand, I didn’t think – so you never know. You live in hope.”