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A year and a half ago, the former YouTuber Miss Benny became friendly with Jordan Firstman at a dinner they were both invited to and spent the entire meal, by her own admission, bullying him for being “the ultimate gay guy” — dishy, cocky, sexual. She charmed him. “She spoke earnestly about her life in a way I was drawn to. I found her incredibly endearing,” Firstman says. “He randomly was like, ‘What are you doing in October? You should do this movie,’” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Yeah, let me do your little gay-guy movie.’ I’m going to help him out.” That little movie ended up being the Cannes breakout ‘Club Kid,’ which received rave reviews, sold at the festival to A24 for $17 million, and is now a bona fide awards-season contender. “Much later, I realized how sought-after this project was,” Miss Benny says. “I’m so glad I didn’t know because I would’ve absolutely lost my mind.” Though she’s in many of the movie’s raucous nightlife scenes, Miss Benny’s favorite part was getting to play a trans girl outside the party space. “With a lot of scripts that I read, if I ever get sent stuff, it’s girls going crazy on drugs and sex,” she says. The idea of playing a self-actualized woman onscreen is new for Miss Benny, whose fame was built pre-transition. In her teens and early 20s, perceived as a young gay man, she rode the wave of corporate-Pride-era queerness to nearly 300,000 YouTube subscribers. In 2023, she starred in the Netflix show ‘Glamorous’ as the 22-year-old influencer Marco, who lands a job with a makeup mogul played by Kim Cattrall. But she stopped posting on YouTube in 2019 and hasn’t been onscreen since ‘Glamorous.’ ‘Club Kid’ is something of a coming-out party. Read our full profile of Miss Benny: nymag.visitlink.me/j20xWz