QueerAF | Inspiring LGBTQIA+ stories told by emerging queer creatives

Ian McKellen on Shakespeare, Magneto and LGBTQIA+ activism

2026-07-20

Our show began as a collaboration with National Student Pride, where we worked with budding students, building audio production careers and giving them their first published work. The organisation, which ran for 21 years, had it’s final event this year in February. We were back, as the event’s media partner, to help them ring the bell on it’s format as a pride of conversation with panels, a careers fair, and the largest gathering of LGBTQIA+ students in the UK. Like all the years we’ve worked togethe...

We were back, as the event’s media partner, to help them ring the bell on it’s format as a pride of conversation with panels, a careers fair, and the largest gathering of LGBTQIA+ students in the UK. Like all the years we’ve worked together, we were on stage recording our podcast, including an upcoming episode in the season.

Over the years, we’ve had Courtney Act, Olly Alexander, Dustin Lance Black, Lady Phyll, and this year the team very kindly allowed us to run this gorgeous interview you’re about to hear. The last time he was at National Student Pride, it was for a recording of the QueerAF podcast - interviewed by Evan Davis in an interview that made headlines all over the world, and won us our first British Podcast Award.

So it is touching that for the final event, he was the final speaker - in what was an interview too wonderful to be lost as a moment in time. So please enjoy, author and screenwriter Juno Dawson, in conversation with Sir Ian McKellen, as he returns to the QueerAF podcast feed one more time - for the last ever, National Student Pride.

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