OITNB Star Lea DeLaria Revealed She Was Gay-Bashed At Age 24

Lea DeLaria is opening up about a scary time in her life when she was gay bashed.

The Orange is the New Black star opened up in a new interview, where she detailed the injuries she sustained from the attack.

Click inside to read more of Lea’s story…

Lea told Page Six that she was “majorly, majorly gay-bashed” in San Francisco when she was 24 years old, to the point where she was admitted to the hospital.

“My nose was broken, chipped an eye socket, had several cracked ribs,” she recalled. “I’ve been verbally abused more times than you can mention in my life, and that still goes on. There’s always someone who’s going to call me a fat guy.”

Lea added that while the harassment has eased in recent years because of her OITNB role, gay-bashing is always “been incredibly rough” for more masculine lesbians, like herself.

“That’s a fact. We get attacked more than any other women in our community,” she says. “It’s always been rough on trans women, very rough especially for trans women of color, and it’s always been incredibly rough on butch lesbians.”

She goes on, saying that “what Orange has done for me, as a butch lesbian, is, it’s opened up people’s hearts and minds to women who look like me. Because Orange was the first positive representation of a butch lesbian that I’ve ever seen in mainstream media.”

If you missed it, one of Lea‘s OITNB co-stars revealed they almost quit before being cast in the show.