Trans actor Elliot Page felt shame and isolation growing up as a queer child, he said in a People magazine interview published last Saturday. That’s why he’s promoting Second Nature, an upcoming nature documentary focused on same-sex relationships and gender fluidity in the animal world.

“I think that sense of growing up as a queer kid and feeling alone — ’cause you feel like you are alone, even, of course, in retrospect, you’re not — you weren’t. You feel excluded, you feel like something’s wrong with you,” he said.

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“You’re carrying these bricks of shame,” he added, “and there’s such implications and consequences in terms of censorship and erasure… and this idea that nature is organized around a cis heteronormative system is just completely false,”

To help alleviate this shame among current generations, he narrated the aforementioned documentary, which examines some of the more than 1,500 animal species that “engage in same-sex sexual behavior and parenting, change sex, form matriarchies, and more,” according to the film’s press release.

The film reportedly “debunks harmful myths about sex and gender, following trans trailblazer Dr. Joan Roughgarden and groundbreaking female, BIPOC, and immigrant scientists who face fierce opposition for correcting the record.”

“For centuries, we have been told that when it comes to gender and sexuality, all these millions of species follow a certain set of rules,” Page said in a teaser trailer from the film. “But what if this narrative fails to capture the full spectrum of life’s diversity?”

In his interview with People, Page called the documentary “beautifully made,” “entertaining,” “funny,” and captivating.

“It’s [full of] interesting facts that you can’t believe you didn’t know before,” he said. “It’s just such incredibly valuable information. No matter who you are, no matter how you identify.”

He also hopes the film will create a “ripple effect of conversation” about the prevalence of same-sex and gender-fluid behaviors in nature as well as the “impacts of censorship on art and science and all facets of our society,” since many zoologists and animal behaviorists have been shamed, defunded, or censored for trying to study such behavior.

Second Nature premiered at this year’s South by Southwest film festival last March. It will open in select movie theaters in May and June. 

Page became a star through the hit 2007 film Juno, for which he got an Oscar nomination. He also appeared in the shocking drama Hard Candy, two X-Men films, and the critically acclaimed Netflix series The Umbrella Academy. In the series, he played Vanya Hargreeves, a violinist with the destructive power to control sound waves.

Even though Page knew he was a boy since age nine, it took until the pandemic for him to transition. “There are pervasive stereotypes about masculinity and femininity that define how we’re all supposed to act, dress, and speak,” he explained after coming out. “And they serve no one.”

Since coming out in December 2020, Page has used his platform to oppose Republican anti-transgender bills nationwide.

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