Ryan Murphy accepts Trailblazer Honor with inspiring speech

“I was told not to follow my instinct, to be someone else. I was told I was too weird, I was too faggy, I was too unusual.” – Ryan Murphy

VH1 premiered their 2018 Trailblazer Honors. During the award show, television director Ryan Murphy was honored as a trailblazer.

Murphy is behind hit shows that include Glee, American Horror Story, and most recently, Pose.

“I’m very thrilled and honored to be receiving this award tonight,” Murphy said at the start of his acceptance speech. “And the very fact that I have a career at all is a miracle.”

He went on: “When I was first starting out in this business in the late 1990s, it was not easy for me. I was told not to follow my instinct, to be someone else. I was told I was too weird, I was too faggy, I was too unusual. My mannerisms and my voice were mocked by executives in note meetings, which I always thought was very weird because in meetings I am capable of speaking in a very low voice.

“But honestly, it was very painful to be discriminated against because what I wanted to do with my life, with my career, was very simple. And that was to see myself and my experiences on television.

“Oprah Winfrey speaks very movingly about watching the Academy Awards and seeing herself and what she could possibly be when Sydney Pointier won an Oscar in 1964. As a gay man, I never had that experience. I never saw triumphant, or at the very least, complicated gay people or gay characters on television. Whereas in the movies as a child or as a teenager, they were always marginalized punch lines at best, beaten for who they were most of the time, killed for who they were.

“I believe strongly in the power of television because I believe in the following: if you see yourself and some part of your human experiences reflected back at yourself, you will not feel alone. And people with hatred and bias in their hearts can often be converted when a character or situation they’re invested in feels like a friend.”

Watch Murphy’s full, moving speech below: