Mihir Kumar is currently starring in one of New York’s most talked about plays of the year—Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury—in an extended run at Studio Seaview through December 13th, 2025, following a sell-out world premiere stint at Playwrights Horizons this summer. The play, which marks Kumar’s stunning Off-Broadway debut, sees him portray Performer 1 as part of a troupe of six actors who ponder what it might mean for us as queer people to witness the marriage of a British Royal, Prince George, to another man. Having posed the question, the performers take to the stage to play out a conjectured future where that happens, with Kumar as the dashingly handsome Dev, a twenty-something South Asian British graduate student who recently began dating the second in line to the British throne, a now adult Prince George (John McCrea ). At a royal weekend visit, Dev is introduced to George’s parents, Kate (Rachel Crowl) and William (K. Todd Freeman), and his sister Princess Charlotte (N’yomi Allure Stewart), as well as the family’s long-serving gay butler and their communications director Jaqueline Davies (David Greenspan taking on dual roles). Sexy, playfully provocative and thought-provoking in equal measure, Prince Faggot is unmissable queer theatre. Read our full ★★★★★ review.
In this exclusive interview, Mihir Kumar speaks with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about first encountering Tannahill’s play when he was still a drama student at Yale, his thoughts on the show’s searing sex scene, why he self-identifies as a faggot, his reaction when he learns that famous audience members like Madonna and Anna Wintour are in the house, his experience working with Sarita Choudhury and Sarah Jessica Parker on the final season of And Just Like That…, and his favourite LGBTQ+ culture. With exclusive photography for The Queer Review by Steven Menendez.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: when did the performer in you first emerge and how did that manifest?
Mihir Kumar: “Growing up in Detroit, I was a figure skater for 10 years, so that was a big part of my childhood. I was doing it five or six days a week. I also played the piano and did a lot of different sports. When I was six, my parents put me in a theatre summer camp and I loved it. After that, I started doing school plays, but it was still figure skating that defined my childhood. When I quit skating in high school I made my way back to theatre in a very intense way. I did every school show. Then at 17 when it came to applying to university, I told my parents that I wanted to be an actor and go to drama school. They were like, ‘Absolutely not! Please go and do something practical.'”
Having put you in that theatre summer camp, what did they expect?!
“Exactly! They created this passion for theatre. I had no idea what I was going to study instead, so I ended up moving to Los Angeles and did marketing at UCLA. Then I worked in the fashion industry for a while and had this whole other life and career. I did some theatre at college for fun, but it was never the focus. But when I was graduating at UCLA my parents came to see me in a show and they were like, ‘You’re really good at this. You should go do it.’ At that time, I didn’t know how to get into it, or how to get an agent or join the unions.”
“I ended up going to Australia in 2017 and lived in Sydney for a while. I took some acting classes at NIDA—the National Institute of Dramatic Art—including a month-long program that simulated the daily schedule of a full drama school course. That was when I knew that I really wanted to go study. So I looked into drama schools and ended up going to the School of Drama at Yale. When I graduated from there in 2023 I moved to New York and I’ve been living here ever since.”
The character you play in Prince Faggot is British, have you spent time in the UK?
“Yes, my parents are Indian and were both born in India, but my dad grew up in London. When they met they ended up moving to the States. I’ve done various stints of living in London and it’s a city that I have a long-standing back and forth relationship with. I can’t imagine not having one foot here and one foot there because I have a lot of friends and some family there. There’s this weird relationship that I’ve always had with the place where I’m there for a bit and then come back to the States. The things that New York lacks I get there, and the things that London lacks, I get here in New York. So it’s nice to have that balance of getting to spend time in both cities.”
What was your experience of growing up queer?
“I had a very negative and a very positive version of it. I think that speaks to the period of time that I grew up in. I’m on the cusp of being a Millennial and being Gen Z. I had a horrible experience of being queer in middle school, but then I had an incredible experience of being queer in high school. In middle school, I was heavily bullied and called a faggot and beaten up and experienced that tragic portrait of gay youth. Whereas my high school was so accepting and so many people were out. I had a boyfriend when I was 16.”
“I watched the culture shift around what being a gay youth was over the course of the ages of 11 to 17. I came out to my parents when I was 16 and they were like, ‘Oh, okay.’ It was such a non-issue. They were like, ‘Yeah, that’s great. What do you want for dinner?’ Which I’m incredibly grateful for. So there were certain things that were amazing and certain things that were very difficult that I struggled with.”
“The most difficult time I had in relation to my own queerness though actually came more as an adult in Los Angeles. Dealing with what it’s like to be a gay man in gay culture as it exists in the cities that we occupy was much more difficult for me than being a gay youth. Trying to find where I fitted in and navigating dating. That aspect of being a gay man took me a lot longer and was much more tedious and challenging than coming to terms with my own queerness as a child.”
What did you envision when it came to the kind of roles you might play when you graduated drama school? Were you actively seeking to play queer roles?
“Prince Faggot is the first time I’ve played a gay romantic lead character in a play, or even a gay character who is in a relationship. Most of the time, the gay characters that I’ve played have been smaller supporting roles, like a gay personal assistant rather than being at the centre of the story. In fact, I’d say that this is the first time I’ve ever played a fully fleshed out gay character. At drama school, I pretty much only played straight men.”
“My experience at drama school was interesting and it probably speaks to the moment that theatre is in right now. Yale has such a huge number of new plays that are produced every year because there are playwrights at the school, but I did very little new work there. I don’t think I actually did a full production of any new work when I was there. Apart from one musical, which was an experience! Prince Faggot is the first new play I’ve ever worked on from beginning to end. I think that’s a lot more to do with race and casting. Because I’m South Asian there aren’t a lot of new works that I am easily castable in, so I ended up doing a lot of classics like Ibsen and Shakespeare at Yale, which are part of the curriculum.”
“The roles that I pictured for myself were always more in film and TV because it’s much more expansive than theatre. Of course, I love the theatre, but in terms of the TV shows that I can be on, or the number of films that I could see myself being in, it’s much greater than the number of plays that I have seen that I could be cast in. Because of that, me imagining what kinds of roles I would have were always in a screen context, rather than theatre. That being said, getting to do this play has been one of the most significant artistic experiences of my life because of what I get to be and what I get to do in this play. I don’t know that there ever will be another play that I get to do all of that in. It’s been so deeply fulfilling artistically.”
Were you involved from the workshop stage or were you cast later?
“Back when they did the first workshop in 2022, casting did reach out to me to ask if I was available, maybe because Jeremy O. Harris, who is one of the producers, knew me. I read the play at that time and I was like, ‘I’d love to do this.’ But I was still in drama school and doing a show when they needed me and we couldn’t make the dates work. So when I saw that it was going to be produced in New York, I was like, ‘Oh, I really want to audition for this.’ Which I did and then ended up being cast. I’m very grateful for that full circle.”
As the play opens, you talk about a real photograph of yourself as a child, how did you come to select that image?
“When we started rehearsals, Jordan and Misha asked me to bring in a few different photos to look through together. I’d gone to my parents’ place and looked through all the photos from 1999 and brought in five options. Jordan was immediately like, ‘It’s got to be that one’ and everyone was in agreement. It’s not about it being obvious. It’s about the subtlety of the way that you’re posing, so that a queer person can look at it and pick up on that and be like, ‘Yeah, that’s what it is.’ Jordan said that when you see that photo of me you also immediately understand why you look at that “gay icon” photo of Prince George from 2017 and have that same experience. The parallel between the two photos makes a lot of sense to me.”
What was it like to collaborate with Jordan on your opening speech, where you include some details from your own life?
“Jordan had written the monologue with some spaces that read, “Performer 1 can add details from their own life here”. Those are the moments where I directly reference my photo and when I’m talking about doing gymnastics and then quitting because I was put in a group with these really buff older gymnastic boys. That’s all true.”
I imagine that including those details, mentioning your own name on stage, and the fact that it’s your own photograph that you’re talking about must make this experience even more special.
“Totally and I think that goes for all six of us in the original company. I’ve never worked on something where I felt like the cast is so in the DNA of the thing. I’ve never felt such a strong personal attachment to something I was in. It’s something that we built together.”
It feels like you’re a close-knit cast, what is it like to be a part of?
“Yeah, we are. A repeat comment from people who’ve seen the show is that it looks like we really like each other on stage and that’s true. It’s rare that you work on something where you genuinely all love each other and are a family in a way. I think it’s because of the way we built the show and it being so personal. I love that people can palpably feel that we genuinely have so much fun doing it. With John specifically, I don’t think you can do a show like this and not be tethered to that person. We’re such opposite people in the way that we live in the world, but I feel like I will forever be tethered to him. I will have a deep love and respect for John forever because of doing this together and what this show asks of us.”
When it comes to your character, Dev, how far do you identify with him? Are there things that resonate?
“Absolutely, there are a lot of things that are similar, but some differences too. Dev grew up working class, I did not grow up working class. He grew up in the UK, I did not grow up the UK. Both of us have been in elite educational spaces. I’d say that even if we have similar politics, we talk about them very differently. We’re both led by our heads, but at the mercy of our hearts. At the end of the day, we’re pragmatic and get stuck in a rigid framework of how we live our lives. Though I’m probably a bit more go with flow than he is.”
“The biggest connection that I have with him is the idea of growing up caught between cultures, growing up in a bilingual household with parents who speak different languages. There is code switching between speaking with your parents, speaking with your family in India, and the way you’re speaking at school. It’s about constantly feeling this need to change the way you move through the world, the way you speak, and the way you behave. Then there’s being gay on top of that. So there’s also switching between being unapologetically gay and then being in a place where you feel you need to hide bits of yourself. Dev growing up the way he did felt very connected to how I grew up in the way you manipulate yourself constantly to adapt to the environment you’re in. The way you feel the need to contort yourself to fit that environment.”
What were your thoughts when you first read the sex scene between Dev and Prince George?
“That sex scene has always been in there as it’s written now. There are nuances and small things that we added when we physically built it in rehearsal, but it’s one of the scenes that has not changed over time. I remember first reading it in 2022 and thinking, this is the most honest portrayal of gay sex that I’ve ever seen in anything. I’ve never read something where it felt so real. It felt so identifiable. I was like, I’ve literally had that sex before. I’ve never read something where I’ve had that reaction. I know exactly what that sex looks like. The intimacy of it felt very real. It didn’t feel gratuitous. It felt like these two young people are still discovering things about their bodies. There’s an awkwardness, there’s a playfulness, and there’s obviously a sexiness to it. It also feels like just another scene in the play. That happens, we’re naked and we’re doing this.”
At the same time it feels provocative, but why should it be? As with the pup mask scene and references to kink and chem sex, it ties in with the theme of what is seen as socially acceptable behaviour for gay men and what isn’t.
“It makes me think of the time when N’yomi, John and I were out getting lunch together between shows and as we were making our way back to the theatre a woman stopped us to talk about the play. She was like, ‘I have a question for you. I don’t mean this in a negative way, but it seems like there’s a lot of depravity in gay culture. Is that really what it’s like?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I guess so, but “depravity” is an interesting way to describe it.’ We’re a hedonistic people, but I think it’s more so that we’re honest about it and we give into the desires that we have willingly. Maybe it’s “depraved” in some context, but if you have a “depraved” desire then giving into that is honest to what you want. I think we just allow ourselves do it.”
“Every weekend when I’m out at a club, I see someone in a pup mask on a leash being led around or dancing in the red lights and fucking releasing. I can understand that from a very straight perspective it might seem like we are “depraved”, but I have never felt more free and able to be authentically myself than when I am in those spaces. Regardless of how society or people outside our culture might view us or certain behaviour, when I’m in the Pines or at Basement or at a rave, or at a house party with my friends, there is this feeling of being at peace, where you can honestly say what you are thinking and feeling and behave in the ways you want. We should all be seeking that. I wish for every person that they find that place, wherever that is for them.”
“I also see straight people doing the same thing—at Berghain, or Basement, or FOLD, at a rave, at a warehouse party, or wherever they want to be—because it’s about them feeling the need to release something. Like in this play, they feel bound by their circumstances because society views it as something that’s “depraved”, so they feel they can only do it in those spaces. Thank God we have those spaces in queer nightlife to give us the freedom to do that.”
What was it like to work on the sex scene with the intimacy coordinator Dave Anzuelo?
“This happened several times throughout the rehearsal process, but particularly when we were building that scene, I was really struck by how I had never been in a room at work before that was all queer people. Between the intimacy coordinator, stage manager, director, associate director, playwright, and the assistant stage manager. Then obviously there was John and I. When we were building that sex scene, I was like, everyone in this room knows what that looks like, they know what’s real and what’s not. That was such a relief because we all knew how to build it truthfully, because we all know what that truth is. So making it was actually very easy. Then we kept refining it over time, finding playful little things that we could enhance or clarify, adding moments of intimacy or warmth, connection or awkwardness.”
I love seeing the words Prince Faggot in huge letters on the massive banner outside Studio Seaview on the corner of 43rd Street and 8th Avenue, knowing so many people will see that even if they never see the play.
“Me too. It’s incredible.”
What’s your own relationship with the word faggot?
“Having been called a faggot a million times in a negative way from the ages of 11 to 13, now I use the word all the time. I really use it constantly. I call my friends fags. Of course, I’ll never use it if someone genuinely doesn’t want me to, but to me, saying, ‘I’m a gay person’, feels really formal and polite. I just say that I’m a faggot. Also, it’s a fun word. It’s a good word in the mouth.”
“In rehearsals we talked about the word queer because we use it in the play. I never use it myself in a self-identifying way, but it’s the only current umbrella term that exists. Saying gay people feels less inclusive than saying queer people or the queer community. K. Todd Freeman and David Greenspan said they don’t like that word, whereas John and I just don’t use it. I use faggot because I feel more akin to it. Maybe it’s a reclamation of the word.”
What were your thoughts on the Royal Family and the institution of the British monarchy coming into this?
“I grew up never thinking about the Royal Family, but in the process of doing this play I realised how much I’ve been bombarded with information about them for my entire life, kind of against my will. I never seek out information about them unless it’s in a very specific, generally historical, context. I have more of a curiosity about that family hundreds of years in the past rather than the current royals. Maybe I had a respect for the Queen to a degree, but now I could not be less interested in them, their lives or what they do. Yet we are subjected to hearing so many mundane details about them which they curate and put out there. They’re responsible for the image of them that exists in the world and all of the information we know about them. It’s so uninteresting to me.”
“Being South Asian, I think if you’re a brown person it’s difficult to have respect for that family in terms of what they represent and what they have represented. It’s like going to the Tower of London and looking at the wealth of your homeland paraded in front of you. If you’re from Africa or the Indian subcontinent, it’s looking at what they’ve taken.”
“I’ve been most interested to talk to English people who come to see the show to get their perspective on it. I think the initial shock of the play is probably much greater for them than it is for the average American because they’re likely to have a much deeper relationship with that family. After that initial shock, it smooths out and you can go along with the rest of the play. I think it’s fundamentally different for English people because they have a protectiveness regarding the Royals that no one else does. No Australian person I’ve met, no American person, and certainly no South Asian person I’ve met has had that same protectiveness or guardedness that some English people do.”
What excites you about delivering this play to a new audience each night?
“The people coming to see it at Seaview have heard something about it and really want to see it. There is this palpable energy in the house. It feels like people are excited and happy to be there and that they are really with you while they’re watching it. Seaview is about two and a half times the size of Playwrights, so I can’t see everyone’s face in the audience anymore, but I can hear and feel the reaction and it’s incredible.”
What’s it like when you have famous people like Madonna and Anna Wintour watching the show? Jonathan Bailey was sitting in the seat directly behind me when I saw it the first time. Do you tend to know that they are there beforehand?
“I love knowing after the show, but I never want to know before because I have to do that opening speech and talk to everyone in the audience. I don’t want to be thinking, ‘Oh look, there’s Madonna!’ But it’s incredible that these people have come to see it. The funny thing is, after the show, I mostly just think, ‘Well, I guess that person has seen me naked now!’ I’m like ‘Well, Madonna and Anna Wintour have both seen me naked. So there we go!'”
You had a fun recurring guest role in the final season of And Just Like That… playing Artold, who started out as Ravi’s assistant and then began working for Seema. How much of a Sex and the City fan were you going into that job?
“I’ve been a massive Sex and the City fan since I was 13 years old when I started watching it, so to be part of the multiverse in some sense obviously means the world. After I was cast, we did a table read of the first episode of season three. I remember everyone introducing themselves and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve literally loved these characters my whole life!’ Those people have worked together for decades, they’re like family to each other, so at the reading there was this back to school energy where everyone was so happy to be there. Close friends, inside jokes and all that. It was a really fun, healthy, positive, and collaborative set to be on. And, of course, the clothes are fabulous. I got to have Birkins!”
“Initially, I was only supposed to be in that one episode as Ravi’s personal assistant. I knew that the character was British, so I auditioned as a British person. At the fitting they gave me a coral pink suit to wear and the costume designer, Molly Rogers, was like, ‘Oh, he needs a Birkin!’ That was when I was like, ‘Okay, this is clearly a very specific type of person.’ Then there was a conversation about what the look was giving: that he went to international school and is generationally wealthy but trying to make it in the world on his own as the assistant to this big movie producer and then he moves on to be Seema’s assistant.”
“It was so incredible to work with Michael Patrick King and Sarita Choudhury. We had a lovely conversation when we were filming and after we finished there was this stay tuned kind of vibe. Then about a month later I got a call and they asked me to come back for two more episodes. I was so grateful that they wanted me to come back and be in more. The first episode actually premiered on the same day as the first preview performance of Prince Faggot. I was like, ‘Wow, everything is happening at once!'”
“I was so happy that I got to be in a scene with Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie. It was so cool watching her work. As an executive producer she’s such an amazing boss on set, then she snaps into being Carrie and does such great work in the scene. Every day was such an amazing learning experience for me because it was only the second screen job that I’d ever done. Getting to work with everyone was fantastic. The show itself is like a beautiful, delicious pastry.”
Last question for you, what’s your favourite piece of LGBTQ+ culture or a person who identifies as LGBTQ+; someone or something that’s had an impact on you and resonated with you over the years?
“Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance is a beautifully written book and something that’s fresh in my mind. I read it many years ago and then reread it last year when I was in London for a month. One of the reasons why I mention that book is that there is actually something quite beautiful in the fact that the culture has kind of reset itself. There’s a connection between queer culture in 1970s New York and the freedom and joy with which it’s presented in that book, and queer life today. Not that it’s all sunshine and rainbows, but it’s something that was written in a world that was entirely pre-AIDS and not defined by tragedy in the way that the crisis came to define gay culture in many ways for decades to come and the creative work that was produced.”
“Rereading it, it was really beautiful to realise that it actually feels like my own life now in many ways. Obviously, things have shifted in terms of social acceptability and our presence in the world, but it’s crazy to think that this book was written 50 years ago and yet it resembles my life today.”
“I struggle with where queer cinema is right now, because there’s this trend of what hot straight white boy of the month can be gay for pay in the next film. That’s really not to criticize their work or anything like that, but there’s something that gets to me about how many queer films have straight men starring in them and they are told that they’re doing great acting because they’re embodying queer trauma and the pain of being gay in the world. There are many movies like that which I’ve loved, but I’m a little disillusioned by them at this point.”
“Whereas there is something about Dancer from the Dance that’s like what I said before about us building the sex scene in Prince Faggot where we all know what the truth of this thing is. There is such a specific niche cultural understanding of being queer that you have that no one else could have and you’re portraying the beauty and joy that exists in it as well.”
By James Kleinmann
Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot is now running through Sunday, December 13th, 2025 at Studio Seaview (305 W 43rd St, New York). Full performance schedule and tickets available at PrinceFaggot.com. A limited number of rush tickets are made available via the TodayTix app the day of each performance. All three seasons of And Just Like That… are now streaming on HBO Max.
Brilliant interview James♥️