Exclusive Interview: Zane Phillips Talks Fire Island, Legacies, and Finding His Purpose in This Industry

Zane Phillips is one of the breakout stars of 2022. Best known for his role as a demigod on the CW’s Legacies, Zane is making the transition to the big screen in Fire Island.

The must-see film follows a group of queer best friends who gather in Fire Island Pines for their annual week of love and laughter, but a sudden change of events might make this their last summer in gay paradise. As they discover the romance and pleasures of the iconic island, their bonds as a chosen family are pushed to the limits. Zane is a standout with his transformative performance as Dex, a less than savory character whose actions have had audiences talking.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Zane about Fire Island, Legacies, finding his place in this industry, and more.

PC: How did you discover your passion for storytelling and the arts?
Zane: I grew up originally in South Denver, but then I moved to a small town in Texas for middle school. That’s where my adolescence and formative years were spent. It was never really much of a thing down there. I was too worried about figuring out what football meant to focus on whether I had a passion for the arts. It was my sister who was really into it; she was the one who dove in head first. For me, I was always tangentially related to these things. The small-town community theater always needed boys, so I would do a couple of those shows. It was always something fun to do in the summers.

It wasn’t a thing until my junior year of high school. It’s so funny—our community theater was doing a production of Man of La Mancha, which is a musical adaptation of Don Quixote. It’s a beautiful score. Being a man in Texas, you start to feel very dissociated from your own emotions, and something about that music and that show carved something out inside of me. I remember thinking, “I need to chase this feeling. I need to create this feeling in other people. I don’t know what it is. I need to figure it out.” It was this light bulb that turned on and I was like, “How do people act? How do people figure this out?”

My mom and I looked on the computer for good schools for musical theater. It was like, “Let’s see where this takes me.” That’s still where I am.

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Zane: Definitely the support system around me has been huge. As a parent, to let your child pursue the arts is brave. But my dad and his family didn’t grow up with a whole lot. He’s always been an incredibly hard worker. For him, it was always about letting us pursue what we wanted without having to worry about meeting the bare necessities. That being said, I still had to f*cking work my a** off and support myself in New York and all that. But they were there being like, “You can do this. We’re not going to make you do anything else.”

I put more pressure on myself to make sure that I wasn’t delusional than they did. As time went on, it was people in my life who believe in me and were like, “I’m going to introduce you to this other person. I’m going to send this email.” I’ve been really, really lucky in that way.

PC: You’re making your feature film debut in Fire Island. What has that transition been like going from television and stage to film? Did anything surprise you about this experience?
Zane: It’s funny because even my television experience is not extensive. I went from a pure stage actor into film. Everybody always says, “It’s about being smaller. You have to find yourself. Your choices have to be a bit different.” I actually found that I felt so much more comfortable within the physical space of the camera and making smaller choices. I was like, “This is what I’ve been wanting to do the entire time.”

Filling a theater is sometimes more difficult. What I found interesting is how much control you get in film, especially with a director like Andrew [Anh] who puts a lot of trust in you as a performer. You find that the choices you make are often the ones that make the cut. He guides and he suggests. He beautifully shapes what the final product is. The thing that most surprised me is how much I got to bring my own work to the table.

PC: Speaking of Andrew, he said that many of the actors are playing versions of themselves, except for you. As an actor, is that more or less challenging?
Zane: It’s funny. It’s very kind of him to stay. I think there’s a version of me that is this character. It’s very much like Everything Everywhere All At Once. If a couple of nodes had been different along the way, this could have been who I was. You always approach a character through yourself, and you always approach your character through the lens of the reality that you can convey. You find the honesty in it; you find the truth in it, and it still sells. There were times when I was like, “I don’t know if I’m doing a ton of character work.” This is just me approaching it from a very specific set of circumstances and the rest falls into place.

PC: What was your character development process like as you were preparing to step into his shoes? How did you approach him without judgment?
Zane: It’s the thing that we tend to say about villains, which is that every villain is the hero in their own story. It’s no different here. You have to really identify, first of all, with what are the ways in which this person is transgressing against the morays of this society or this particular subculture. That’s the thing for any Mr. Wickham character, right? He enters into this structure, and he messes around with it. He slips in between the gaps, and he comes in from the outside. I’ve said this before about queer culture: it’s a very sex-positive culture that is consent driven. As long as everyone is consenting, let them do it. Who are we to say anything?

For my character to come in as a sex worker and violate that sacred space of consent, therein lies where his villainy comes in. That’s specifically where we get into those feelings like, “Oh my God. This is not a good guy.” For me, I had to say, “Okay, what leads someone to say that this is okay?” Because he can’t come into this being like, “I’m an a**hole.” I think [in his mind] it comes from a lot of little baby steps where he’s saying, “Maybe Luke was under the influence of alcohol or drugs, but he still said yes, so it’s fine.” There’s a line that gives some ambiguity to what the situation was that night. You go from there.

You say, “Okay. He probably didn’t care that he was completely sober.” You’re like, “He probably posted a lot of these videos and assumes it’s okay.” There’s a lot that people can start to think is okay when the repercussions don’t hit them.

Going back to the question, how did I find my way into this character? I was very lucky to have some reality checks very early in my development, early in my time in the city in that you’re like, “This is the world that you’re in and you need to treat people with respect, and you need to be so hyper-aware of what people are comfortable with and what consent actually means.” It’s a huge conversation, especially now.

We’ve been emphasizing it: consent under the influence is not consent. You have to really think about these things and play with them. This character comes at it from a sense of not having had to really think about that critically. That lets him swoop into that place. It was a challenge because it’s a very bad thing what he does.

There was a tweet where someone said, “He’s trash, but girl…” People were like, “Oh my God. I can’t believe you could even consider…” There’s an insidiousness to the character in that you do want to be charmed by him, but at the end of the day, he’s truly a trash person.

PC: You’ve also said in previous interviews that you found a lot of comfort being surrounded by your community on set. How did that ultimately translate to the choices that you made with your performance on screen?
Zane: Any time you enter into a new project, you get those first-day nerves. You ask yourself, “How do I fit in? What am I giving talent wise? Am I going to make a complete fool of myself?” I think what was really revelatory to me was how much of that was informed in the past by straightness. I tend to play a lot of straight characters, so you always are worried, “Are the choices that I’m making going to read straight enough? Am I convincingly playing this character? Am I convincingly giving this chemistry (if I’m playing opposite a girl)?”.

Being able to get on set and realize that my gayness was not in any way going to be a hindrance towards playing this character was really cool. There were some takes that I did where I was a little silly—I did make some weird, silly choices. You get on set with this particular cast who are little silly Billies and you feel inspired to do that. I remember Andrew at one point was like, “We need to dial that one back.” But at the same time, I felt safe enough to do that. I felt safe enough to explore different parts of myself through this character in those ways.

It was extremely helpful. I keep on saying it was the perfect post-pandemic job because I did get to ease in with a group of amazing people and people who I consider really good friends now.

PC: Like you were saying earlier, audiences have had a strong reaction to your character. How rewarding is that for you as an artist to see that the performance you’ve given has provoked this sort of response and emotion?
Zane: It’s cool. It’s a testament to Joel [Kim Booster] for writing the character in the way that he did. Because again, I do think it’s such an interesting study on the insidious of Whiteness in all its forms. You see it through all of the White characters and how they’re able to navigate the space and what capital that Whiteness always holds even underneath the covers.

That has always been a goal for me—I don’t necessarily need to be part of the most prestigious things in the world, but I love being part of projects that have something to say. Joel has a tremendous amount to say. He doesn’t even have to try; it just comes out of him. Being able to be a part of his and Andrew’s vision, I feel incredibly grateful. I feel incredibly grateful that people are seeing it and responding to it.

PC: It’s gotten such a great response since its premiere on Hulu last week. What do you think is resonating most with audiences? What do you personally hope they take away after they see it?
Zane: It’s incredibly honest. For me, personally, and in the media that I’ve watched, which granted I don’t consume a lot of content, but I try to keep up, it was the first thing that I read where I was like, “This is actually how we talk to each other.”

Again, coming at this as a queer man in New York, there are some specificities to that, but I had never seen that captured so brilliantly in terms of the sparkle, the joy, and the bite, and the underlying hurt and all these different things that combine and it’s never presented as anything but normal.

That was really cool about Fire Island as a space. You get to go past all the things of saying this is a gay story. No, it’s just a story that is taking place in a very queer place. So suddenly from there, you get to have these honest conversations and relationships. I think combined with the fact that we do have something unprecedented in terms of how we’re framing these main characters.

We don’t get to see queer Asian men presented in this light. It feels unprecedented to me, but I think that’s what people are responding to. It’s the newness and honesty and the fact that it’s beautiful. It’s comforting, even in its ambiguity of the ending. It hits all the things that a rom-com can do right, which is it gives you likable character, put them through it, and then still see them discovering something about themselves.

PC: Great answer. Outside of Fire Island, you had a breakout performance role in the CW’s Legacies. Unfortunately. it’s not coming back for another season. When you look back at that experience, what will you remember most? If you could share a message with fans of the show and your fans, what would it be?
Zane: I’d say Legacies came at a really important time in my life. Again, we’re coming out of the pandemic. It was a very transitional time for me in terms of finding my purpose and how I fit in this industry. I think what I’ll remember the most is this feeling of being valued. That has helped inform so much of the spaces that I want to be in.

I don’t need to be winning awards. I mean, awards are always nice, but if I can be in a space where I feel like what I bring to the table is appreciated and people like who I am as a person and like what I do then that’s where I want to be. That is exactly how I felt on that set; I felt extremely appreciated. The vibes were so good. The cast was always so welcoming and so loving. I felt like I really got a chance to feel at home in a way that even in New York, I didn’t get a chance to. That was really, really special.

For the fans, they really resonated with seeing queer characters put in situations like this. There was something so inherently powerful about seeing queerness on screen. My message is to keep supporting queer creators because that’s how we get more of it.

We love to see characters, but I think celebrating the people who are making this content is what is really going to make the change. That is what is really going to help us as queer performers be able to have more things to do and more spaces to inhabit. I love it. I love that in my career so far, I’ve already gotten to play a diverse set of characters in terms of personality type and their approaches to the world. It’s fun for me. It’s fun that I don’t have to sit in one box. I can roam. That’s my message: support queer creators!

To keep up with Zane, follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Watch Fire Island on Hulu today.

Photo Credit: VazhaK