Photos by Laurel Golio

Who gets to be a superhero? Hollywood gatekeepers have historically reserved the cape and tights for yet another straight white guy marooned on an island or blasted by cosmic radiation. But if the success of films like Black Panther and Wonder Woman are any indication, audiences are gravitating away from cookie-cutter narratives and toward characters that break the mold.

Chella Man, a 20-year-old artist based in Brooklyn, New York, has never seen his identities reflected authentically on-screen, let alone in a blockbuster, as a deaf, transgender, Chinese and Jewish person. And yet, a superhero hell be when he suits up for the second season of Titans as the mute crime fighter Jericho and makes history as the first disabled trans masculine actor to join the DC universe.

The part seems tailor-made for Chella, and his casting was celebrated as a cut-and-dry representational win amid an ongoing dialogue about which actors (not now, Scarlett Johansson ) should inhabit which roles.

The activist, model and social media star has been steadily building a following across Instagram and YouTube, where hes carved out a much-needed space for his intersectional voice. Chellas videos and posts document his life, relationship, transition and just about everything in between with an uncompromising vulnerability, and they bravely position his multiple identities not as some fetishized novelty, but as an everyday, lived reality.

As his star continues to rise, Chella remains fiercely committed to making his communities proud and becoming the role model for young LGBTQ folks he never had growing up. Before he blasts off, we caught up with Chella to talk about what makes a hero, the power and pressure of intersecting identities and his undeniably super future.

You recently broke a certain part of the internet when it was announced youd been cast in Titans. What spurred your decision to get into acting?

Now that I finally feel like this body I have is mine and I identify with what I look like on the outside as well as on the inside, I can experiment not with figuring out who I am, but with other personalities, which is why acting ties in so perfectly.

What initially drew me to you was how you showcase everyday joys, struggles, wins and losses, because we often only get to see a slice and its usually pretty bleak of queer peoples lives. Do you think that kind of openness fueled your following?

Its definitely about being my own representation. The fact that not only just me, but anybody with a smartphone has the ability to represent themselves and its somewhat accessible and isnt scanned through big corporations that tell you, Oh, thats not palatable, is powerful. We dont have to be palatable to anyone, and its our choice what we want to share.

You sit at the intersection of multiple identities. Does this put a certain pressure to be entirely representative of each of these communities?

Something important that I always remind myself of is that you cant fight everyones battles. Its impossible to fully share every single perspective of every identity because you can only work with what you have. I think the point of being visible as a marginalized person is to bring up more people within your marginalized communities, because every single person has a different experience that you cant always represent.