Brittany Devon’s ‘quiet subtleness of sureness’

The up-and-coming queer creative discusses their work, identity, and future.

By MOLLY BOOKNER

Divine intention.

To actor and multihyphenate creative Brittany Devon, these words tattooed on the backs of their legs signify “the divinity we all are, mixed with the intention in which we’re here to live.” They quickly add their spiritual “angel number” (four) and enchantment with the hour 11:11. “It feels like a wink from the universe,” she says. Unknowingly, I emailed Devon at 11:11 PM and started our January 11 interview at exactly 11:11 AM.

Devon, 30, runs She | Them Productions, a Chicago-based production company dedicated to telling inclusive and original stories. The webseries Platonic Girlfriend, one of the company’s jewels, amassed more than 180,000 collective YouTube views in its first season and recently began releasing weekly episodes from its second season. (Season three is in the works.) Flipping the script on the gay best friend trope by featuring a queer, nonbinary lead (played by Devon) with a straight friend, the series acts as a visual love note to relationships and the many, often confusing forms they take.

“Brittany handles complex emotional scenarios with ease in her delivery,” says actor, software engineer, and fan Zach DeNardi in an Instagram message. As a queer and gender-fluid creative and a Second City Conservatory graduate, Devon seeks to elevate the stories of those too often silenced. “I’m really passionate about normalizing who I am onscreen,” Devon says over Zoom. “I think [that kind of representation] can change the world.”

Devon cofounded She | Them Productions with their former partner of a decade, Fiona Campbell, a fellow actor, writer, and producer. While the pair no longer date, they share the same address—and four dogs. “Brittany will always be my family,” says Campbell. “I feel like the way in which she lives her life is an example for people.” Campbell cites Devon’s openness, honesty, and vulnerability, as well as the way in which she consistently honors her truest self, even if it makes others uncomfortable. To her, Devon is a “living example” of being out and proud.

Connar Brown, an actress, editor, producer, and puppeteer, is the third member of the production company. She met Devon and Campbell nearly four years ago at the You Never Know Show —or the Scam Comedy Show , as the trio refers to it.

According to Devon and Campbell, the director advertised the show as the “ SNL of Chicago,” but it turned out to be nothing more than an elaborate swindle. Despite attending weekly creative meetings, writing sketches, and assisting the director with ad hoc requests for months (like generating social media content and editing videos), neither Devon, Campbell, nor Brown received a cent. But they became friends and renewed their interest in developing original ideas.

Before founding She | Them Productions in 2015 and moving to Chicago five years ago, Devon modeled, wrote plays, and auditioned for substantial projects, including Pretty Little Liars and True Grit (although they were not cast). “What’s been so cool to watch with [Brittany] is you can get an incredible performance delivered and not have to make it look like it was the hardest thing in the world,” says Christian Gill, a friend who worked with Devon on different sets. “There are a precious few who were born to do this, and Brittany was born to do this.”

The Pretty Little Liars audition came when Devon was questioning aspects of their identity. Although they were reading for the role of Hanna, Devon remembers reading the part of Emily “and being like, ‘I kind of want to be Emily; I kind of want to kiss a girl.’” While participating in their school’s production of Copacabana around that time, they also felt “lust” for a fellow high schooler playing the role of Gladys Murphy, a cheeky cigarette girl. “It’s kind of like that thing they say, ‘Do I want to be you or be in you?’” Devon says with a laugh.

When she finally came out a few years later (initially as bisexual; she now identifies as lesbian), Devon says she felt judged by many people. Best friends and extended family members couldn’t understand why she identi-

“I think it’s interesting how when someone’s going through something that’s so their own, people take it so personally,” Devon says. “That’s when I really see there’s this idea of you versus them seeing you for who you are.”

Devon’s gender identity similarly took shape over time. As a teenager, they recall snooping around guy friends’ bathrooms and silently wishing theirs looked the same in terms of products and overall aesthetic. They never felt super comfortable in dresses and wanted to chop their hair at 17, though they waited until age 25.

Today, Devon feels a “quiet subtleness of sureness” about who they are. “I very much honor the body I was given and the experience I was given, and I love loving women—and also I realize my soul and who I am in this world and how I connect, doesn’t have a gender.”

Devon grew up on a 200-acre farm in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and lost both her mother and father by age 27. Despite this trauma, she speaks of them calmly and candidly. She also narrates Adult Orphan, a podcast about managing the world without parents.

Devon’s father, whom they lost to Alzheimer’s across 12 years, was a Serbian immigrant and internationally renowned polo player who once competed against then-Prince Charles. He was also the owner of Cole’s Quality Foods, a neighborhood bakery-turned-manufacturing center, and invented frozen garlic bread in 1973 (the snack became so popular that Cole’s ultimately built a nine-story freezer to meet the growing demand). Like him, Devon finds solace in riding horses. “I rode horses since I came out of the womb,” she says. Devon’s mom, their “best friend,” worked in insurance before pivoting to care for her husband full time. She died from a heart attack about four years ago. “Through that heartbreak, it’s made me stand up for myself and create myself in a way that I never knew was possible,” says Devon.

As part of the healing process, Devon is writing a memoir, Uprooted, which they hope to see on shelves before 2024. Its first-person essays and short stories explore the notion of being rooted, uprooted, and finally, grounded. “I feel like I’ve been sitting back on the throne of my life lately and seeing what comes forth,” Devon says. “I’m on this journey right now of remembering my magic.” v

In 1898, Darrow successfully defended Thos. I. Kidd, Geo. Zentner and Michael Troiber in a case brought by the state of Wisconsin for conspiring to injure the business of the Paine Lumber Company by organizing a strike of the woodworkers in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The workers sought a raise, the abolition of women and child labor, recognition of the union, and weekly paychecks.

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