The first thing Thai Boys Love drama star Panuwat Kerdthongtavee does when they arrive on my screen is confess their nerves. But from their neatly-styled light chestnut hair and that smile, you’d never know.
The actor, known as Copter, posted a series of tweets on June 6 that concluded by announcing that they are nonbinary. “I had a question in my head, will everyone understand what I am? But I think at this point, I’m not afraid of anything anymore,” Copter tells Teen Vogue. Zooming in to lend their thoughts for our Pride of BL story, they wind up giving so much more. Time with Copter feels like two friends around a campfire, a flame that only swells as they share their truth.
As the star of BL dramas such as 2Moons and Gen Y, the 25-year-old actor is no stranger to LGBTQ+ culture in Thailand, and being in proximity to queer issues because of these roles has meant constantly learning new phrases and identities.
They weave a story about their questioning of gender and frustration with operating under a binary way of thinking. Imagine two boxes: “I’m trying to bring my body into one of the boxes, and then I found that my head was pushed into another box,” they say. Even after trying to change their posture to fit into one box, their feet were thrust into another. This reckoning of experience and environment, struggling to fit into either of two pre-defined spaces, is ultimately what led them to discover that they are nonbinary.