Justice Smith is entering a new era — one where he understands himself, trusts himself, and, yes, is not dating women.
On the latest episode of Sony Music Entertainment’s Dinner’s On Me podcast, hosted by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the Now You See Me, Now You Don’t star opens up about growing up in Orange County, surviving vicious high school bullying, navigating queerness in his 20s, and the sense of freedom he’s found in same-sex relationships.
“I will never date a woman again”
During the episode, Smith dives directly into how he understands his sexuality today — and why he’s not interested in dating women anymore.
“I will never date a woman again,” he says. “Not because I’m not attracted to them. But because I don’t like the feeling of having to be the man in the relationship.”
Smith explains that heterosexual dating often forced him into a role he never wanted.
“When I was dating women, I just felt like I always had to be the proverbial big spoon,” he says. “What I like about same-sex relationships is that we both can kind of switch off on what parts of ourselves we’re showing.”
For Smith, queer relationships finally freed him from gendered expectations.
Growing up queer and Black in an overwhelmingly white arts school
While Smith is comfortable in his identity now, he makes it clear that the road there was long and complicated.
He attended an independent charter performing arts high school in Orange County, a place he describes as both progressive and painfully homogenous.
“I was like one of like 17 Black kids in the whole school,” he says. “There was a lot of like white kids from Irvine… and I started to receive a lot of messaging… about my race and my sexuality.”
Despite the school’s reputation as queer-friendly (“the girl to guy ratio was like 11 to one… it was mostly girls and gays”), it wasn’t always a safe environment. Some of Smith’s worst bullying came not from homophobic boys but from mean-spirited girls who targeted him long before he even understood his own sexuality.
One incident still haunts him — an improv exercise where classmates staged his “coming out party” as a joke before he had come out himself.
“I come in… and I’m slowly realizing what it is,” he recalls. “And I’m just like, ‘It’s my coming out party.’ And then everyone laughs. It was so fucked up.”
Smith also opens up about playing straight roles in movies and TV. “To be a marginalized person is to study the dominant culture,” he explains, describing how code-switching — deepening his voice, shifting posture, adjusting energy — became second nature both in life and in playing heterosexual roles on screen.
He then reflects on the emotional impact of HBO Max’s Generation, which he calls a healing, transformative experience. Channeling Chester’s bold, femme freedom allowed him to access a part of himself he didn’t know he’d been missing, especially since the show was set in his real hometown of Anaheim. Smith also shares how warmly he was welcomed into the Now You See Me franchise, and has a sweet full-circle moment when he realizes he grew up practicing the very Broadway song Jesse Tyler Ferguson once originated.
