I first met Tati two years ago in a New York City hotel; I was directing a Viceland docuseries, My House, about the ballroom community in New York. Tati—known for her athletic, femme queen voguing and iconic wardrobe—was the last cast member to sign her contract. Tati was a beautiful, shy, confident, and grounded young woman. Although she had already made an impactful legacy for herself in the community, she was wrestling with vulnerability and opening up her intimate life to the masses. Everyone wanted her presence, so I offered to meet her in person to help seal the deal. We connected immediately, and within a week, she agreed to join the show.

Today, Tati is just as confident and tenacious as when I first met her, but now that time has passed, she is much more vocal, extroverted, and vulnerable—using her voice to create a new narrative and reality for black trans women in America. I’ve watched her soft-spoken voice expand to one that is political, intentional, and with a relatable street edge. She’s gone on to star in FX’s Pose and done major campaigns with Equinox, Nike, and more. As outspoken as she’s become, it still takes Tati time to warm-up. I prepared for that. We did our interview with candles, dim lights, chakra incense, some rosé, and throwback R&B jams.

NNEKA: You’ve been on a docuseries about your life, you’ve been on Pose, you’ve done a bunch of magazine shoots, and you’ve worked with tons of brands. What has it been like for you since being on TV? How has your life shifted?

TATI: I still feel like I have a lot to do and a lot to accomplish, but I feel like now life finally has a purpose. I finally have a platform where I can express myself, share my ideas, my thoughts, and help other people just be who they are. They see where I came from and my truth, and see how I didn’t let that tear me down. I used it to build a foundation for myself, to be a better person every day. I’m optimistic about the future. I can use the things I’ve gone through, coupled with the things I’ve learned, to make the world a better place.

NNEKA: From knowing you personally, it’s really clear to me that you have gone through some sort of internal evolution and revolution within yourself.

TATI: Once the opportunity of the show came along, it was a turning point in my life. I was deciding if I wanted to do something different. I’m naturally a private person, so I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share that with the world. I had a conversation with my best friend and I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is something I want to do.’ I can’t leave anything out, and I can’t sugar coat it. I told myself that I have to be as transparent as I can be, keep it real, and be 100 percent authentic. I felt like I wanted to let go of the burden of being involved in sex work, and be open with my transition, and the things I experienced as a child growing up in a single-parent household. I felt like my story was something a young black trans girl needed to hear. You don’t have to succumb to negativity, you can overcome it.

NNEKA: What made you accept your calling and go for your dream?

TATI: The pivotal moment for me was when I asked myself: how do I want to live my life? Do I want to live my life in the past, or do I want to live in my truth and help other people? Do I want to live life under the radar, or do I want to be seen and ultimately help other people be seen?

NNEKA: What is your truth?

TATI: I feel like my truth is being unapologetic. I feel like ever since I was younger, I told myself to never be ashamed of who I am. I’ve always been a feminine individual. I never tried to contain it. I’ve always been who I wanted to be, even prior to my transition. Even in moments of being in denial and trying to appease other people… it never worked.

NNEKA: In what ways did you try to be something other than yourself?

TATI: (Laughs) Prior to my transition I tried to be masculine, and I tried to be boyish. I was trying to be a tom-girl. (Laughs) It didn’t work for me.

NNEKA: You’re always yourself though! You always do something people don’t expect you to do.

TATI: Every trans girl is different. We’re not confined to the same standards. I think I’m different, because my overall ideas of how I view things are different. I always felt like, when I was younger, I had ideas people have never done before.

NNEKA: Like what? Give me an example.

TATI: Like I’ve always wanted to have a black-owned bank. I always wondered—why didn’t celebrities gear up to own their own bank? We don’t have to go in those other institutions and ask for money. We can just look out for each other and give each other these opportunities to open businesses.

NNEKA: That’s a good idea. I’ve always been passionate about us as a community taking our finances to new levels. What other ideas do you have that you want to pursue?

TATI: I want to open up a trans non-profit scholarship for girls who don’t necessarily have the means to pay for school. I just had a conversation with this other girl while we were on the set of Pose. She’s in school now and had a situation where she couldn’t pay for her class. I think she said she had to drop it. I thought—if we had a thing where we could send her money and give a scholarship, then we wouldn’t have to go through that. It sucks, because she was really into school. When I spoke to her about the idea she said, “Well what I gotta do? Who do I gotta write the essay for cause I’ll write the essay.” She was assertive and ready.

NNEKA: If you could write your own “I Have a Dream” speech for your community, or if you were the freakin’ fairy Godmother in Cinderella (WhitneyHouston version) and could just pop in a window and grant the wishes of your community, what would those be? What would the dream be?

TATI: I think in the current climate, I would change toxic masculinity and the men that deal with it. They are just so uncomfortable and so unhappy with themselves that it leads them to do things that are so catastrophic to communities. Because of the scrutiny they go through from their peers, and then from cis women, they’re unable to live a happy life without being judged for something they naturally like. I feel like a lot of women play a huge part in that. They often criticize men on their identity, judge them, and call them all types of vulgarities. That’s not right. That plays a big part of why the world is going through this crap.

NNEKA: And for yourself and your family?

TATI: I like family time, definitely, because I knowhow it is to not have them. Now that I have them back in my life, I really value that. I guess if I could go back, I would inform my mother on the background of being trans, to better soothe her introduction to me, so we could have a better understanding of what it means to be trans. She always said, “my child is different and I know that.” I felt like trans was out, but it wasn’t out like it is today.

NNEKA: Yeah things like coming out as trans are even more shocking, because you really don’t have any exposure to it.

TATI: Yeah, I feel like the exposure back then was very miniscule. Like, you had the trans girls that use to be on the Maury Show, and Jerry Springer had it on his show too. It wasn’t really something you would see in an urban neighborhood. You was not seeing that in Brooklyn! When it became present in our family, they were like, “you want to be a what?!” It was very unorthodox. I feel like I could have eased into it a bit better. I was a child, so I didn’t really know at the time how I could help [my mother].

NNEKA: But you could now!

TATI: Yes!

NNEKA: So your goal is to rewrite history so we can support each other financially and through education. You seem to have this political underlying thing in your spirit.

TATI: I’m not a politician! (Laughs)

NNEKA: What seems so different about what I hear you say is that you want to shift and support the day-to-day normalities of life. I feel like a lot of times people only talk about sexuality or surgery when it comes to trans women, but I feel like you have a bigger picture. You want to see a relationship. You want to see financial freedom. You want to see education. That’s very different from the narrative I hear.

TATI: You know Jay-Z didn’t lie when he said, “All the women in the world are the future.” He had visuals of all the women and that included trans women, and that’s what it will look like. We have the ability and capability of being powerful individuals in society. Even if I’m not going to be a politician, I can provide opportunities for the girls who want to do that and make changes for the girls after us.