Filmmaker Lee Daniels was “sort of happy” when the dad who beat him for being gay died

Lee Daniels, director of Precious and The Butler, recently did an interview with KCRW and shared how an abusive father shaped his childhood and his work as a filmmaker.

“I ran from that for such a long time – my identity – because I was beaten for it, and then my dad died and I was sort of happy that he did because I dunno that I would have been alive, he’d just kept beating me for being gay.”

“So my mom didn’t want me around cause then… in the African American community we don’t embrace that [being gay]. You know, we simply don’t because men have to be strong and being gay is not a good thing.”

“And so my mom took me to an all-white school… at that point I went from being ‘gay, gay, gay’ to ‘n—er, n—er, n—er.’ …It’s a very, very, very painful experience to live and I try to show that in all of my work, you know, the personal atrocities that I’ve lived.”