Two years on, transgender comic from Belle River taking act to the next level
Louis Brady is attending a program at Humber College in Toronto to learn comedy writing and performance
It's been two years since Louis Brady spoke to the CBC about his life as a transgender comedian in Windsor. Now, the young comic is doubling down on his career as a comic and reflecting on what he's been through after our story with him first aired.
"I got recognized at a Winners," Brady said. "That basically means I've made it, I think."
At the time, Brady was 15-years-old and had only just recently come out as transgender and gay and was performing at bars with his parents in the crowd. Since then, he's stuck with comedy and is now taking it to the next level, learning comedy writing and performance at Humber College in Toronto and scoring gigs at Yuk Yuks comedy club.
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"I'm getting a lot of opportunities to go to shows and see comedians like me and talk to people like me," he said.
"In Windsor, it's a lot less representation. It's a lot of the same people which isn't a bad or a good thing, it's just how it is. It's just really interesting to see the diversity and the different kind of comics."
Thinking back on the CBC interview, which received both positive and negative attention, Brady said it was exciting at the time. The negative comments, he said, bothered him for about a week but it was easy to get over.
"It was a lot of angry strangers yelling at me on the internet," he said jokingly. "I'm not going to lie, I would have appreciated a little more originality with their hate."
"Some of the comments did hurt but in the long run they don't really affect me because obviously they don't have to watch if it's so offensive to them... I learned I'm a lot more resilient than I used to be."
There are differences, he said, living in the big city of Toronto as a transgender person, for one, it's just a more common.
"Like when I said I was a transgender comic back in Windsor everyone was like 'oh my god, that's super cool' and then here they're like 'yeah ok, there's like 18 of you, next," he said.
"[In Belle River] it's kind of lonely because there's very few of you and it's hard to find people like you."
'Almost unbelievable'
At the time of our first story, Brady was also holding off on going through hormone therapy or having top surgery done because his parents were asking him to hold off until he was 18. With his 18th birthday just days away on November 30, he said he will be getting top surgery done in just a few weeks.
"I can't describe the feeling, it means so much to me," Brady said. "When you've been wanting and begging and pleading, it's like 'please let me be myself, please just let me be me, please let me do this so I can be in the right body' and then someone finally says sure here's your opportunity, it's almost unbelievable."
And when it comes to hormone therapy, he said, he's glad his parents made him wait.
"Although I'm interested in doing it, I'm definitely not as interested as I was when I was younger," he said. "I really wanted to be 100 percent masculine and I wanted to be like boy but now the things I think testosterone would bring for me, personally, I don't think I need as much and I think I might be more interested in that kind of thing when I'm older."
Fight hard
When asked what advice he might give to a young transgender person, Brady said that while it isn't easy, sometimes it just takes a while for things to get better.
"I don't want to sugar coat it and say it's going to be easy the entire time," he said. "You have to fight very hard to be yourself."
"[If] you keep fighting it will happen for you."
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