‘In Living Color’ star Tommy Davidson admits he’s had to “adjust” while supporting his trans son

Comedian Tommy Davidson says it took him no time to accept his transgender son.

At the same time, as he recently explained in a candid interview with journalist and critic Touré on his podcast the Touré Show, he’s “still adjusting” to his son’s new name and pronouns.

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Davidson explained that he had no trouble immediately accepting his son Jersey when he came out as trans at age 15 because he’d been exposed to the LGBTQ+ community from a young age.

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“I knew trans people growing up,” Davidson said. “And my brother was gay. You know, so I was exposed to that whole community.”

Davidson said he first saw an androgynous person as a child working with his mother at the Workers World Party in New York.

“I saw a man that acted like a woman and kinda looked like a woman but kinda was a man,” he recalled. “I asked my mother and she gave me the perfect answer. I asked, ‘What is he? Is he a man or a woman?’ She said, ‘You know what, honey, he’s kinda both.’”

“What she did was condition me to not reject others, to not reject someone that was not like me,” he added.

Touré suggested that while many parents of their generation had grown up accepting and embracing gay and lesbian people, “the trans thing felt different, because it seems, outwardly, like a change.”

“Trans people are aligning with who they really are,” he said. “They are not changing, but outwardly it looks like they are changing.”

“It took me a while to wrap my mind around that,” Davidson admitted. “Me and my wife, we had a child. We found out that child was a girl, so we prepared for what a girl is to us.”

At the same time, Davidson, who seemed to struggle with pronouns throughout the interview, asked for what Touré described as “grace” if he unintentionally misgendered or deadnamed his son out of habit. “It doesn’t make me a bad guy,” Davidson insisted. “I’m still adjusting.”

Touré also asked Davidson for his perspective on fellow comedian Dave Chappelle’s anti-trans “jokes” in recent stand-up specials.

“Nothing bothers me enough to hate someone,” Davidson said.

Touré pushed back, asking whether Davidson thought Chappelle’s comedy conveys to his audience that it’s ok to ridicule trans people.

“You’d have to ask him,” Davidson said. “My comedy is just about making people laugh about their similarities, not their differences.”

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