Ts Madison has no regrets about what she needed to do to survive, but she doesn't want any more of her fellow trans women to have to travel the same road.
"I don't want the excuse to be, going forward 20 years from now, 'I had to be a sex worker,'" the star of We TV's The Ts Madison Experience told E! News in an exclusive interview. "I want you to not rely on your body. I want you to rely on the skill set that the higher authority has given you to do something else. You don't have to be a sex worker. You can be everything else in life."
That being said, the first-ever Black trans woman to star in and executive produce her own reality show after earning a living from sex work and adult entertainment also isn't judging. She just wants her community to be safe and have the resources to become their best authentic selves.
If it's an avenue a woman wants to pursue "to finish your education, invest in property, do something like that," she said, "let us teach you how to do that here in the Ts Madison Starter House."
In partnership with philanthropist Dominique Morgan and sponsored by Atlanta nonprofit NAESM, Madison donated her own home in the area to serve as a safe haven for at-risk members of the trans community.
"God has given me so many things and the way that you honor gives, is, you give back," she explained. "I really don't want a lot of the girls to walk the same path that I did. If I can come in and teach someone how to make different life choices and not to follow directly in [my] footsteps, but a new path, a new beginning—and also live in the house where it all started for me—then I'm doing the service of what the higher authority wants me to do."
And for those who may be skeptical that the higher power she speaks of is looking out for them, Madison explained that she talks "incessantly about God" because she wants people in the LGBTQIA+ community to rest assured that "he loves everybody in the house. Whether you're gay, you're trans, you're nonbinary—whatever it is you believe in—God loves you no matter what, no matter what society or the world tells you."
And if you'd like to drink to that sentiment, Madison's got just the right beverage, having partnered with House of Love Cocktails' "Still Gay Day" Pride campaign to remind that—while June is designated Pride Month—love and acceptance should still be the name of the game on July 1 and all year round.
"I want people to be proud to be who they are," Madison said. "And that doesn't have anything to do with just sexual orientation or identity. If you're big and beautiful, be proud to be big and beautiful. If you're 6 feet tall, be proud to be 6 feet tall. For every imperfection, be proud that you have it because it was given to you and not anybody else."
And teaming with RuPaul's House of Love brand was an obvious yes for the resident "trans whisperer" on RuPaul's Drag Race. Madison loved the campaign's message that Pride is "not just a month, not just a week, not just a day," she said. "It's a lifetime of you being who you are, of coming into yourself and living in your authentic truth."
It's too easy to get caught up in other people's feelings, she continued, "and we're smothered by their thoughts, the way that their perception of us might be. This campaign shows that, all year long, the only voice that matters in who you are is yours."
Not to mention, yummy cocktails that come in vibrantly colored cans have a way of bringing people together.
"My cousins came over and we had a bunch of House of Love cans around the house," Madison recalled, "and they saw RuPaul's face on it. One of my cousins said, 'Is this going to make me gay?' I said, 'Maybe, baby, maybe!' And we laughed about it, but he drank it and he took a whole case home with them and said, 'Well, if this makes me gay, I guess I'm going to be full of love!' And I said, 'Everybody say love, honey!'"
And while Madison was a Drag Race "super fan" long before she ended up a judge on the hit show, let's just say, she's not entirely surprised to have ended up sitting alongside her idol.
"God aligned myself and Ru together," she said, "because I remember being a 14-year-old boy sitting with my legs crossed on the floor, I heard a voice say to me, 'You're going to be friends with this person and y'all going to work together one day.' Ru had to be about 30 years old, and I didn't know anything about TV or anything."
Madison added, "That's why it's so important that I sit on this panel, because I was a young queen trying to figure it out. And now I get the opportunity to help launch queens out into the world to be superstars, to fulfill a dream that they have had."
Needless to say, "RuPaul has been such an inspiration to me," she noted. And she has taken the 13-time Emmy winner's advice to heart.
"He said to me, 'Ts Madison, don't you ever be too big for the small things, because the small things will get you through when the big things aren't working,'" Madison shared. "That's why I take jobs and I don't think that I'm too good for a big check, I don't think that I'm too good for a little check. If you got a check, honey, I'm on the way."
But while a gig's a gig, Madison's main goal is to have enough bread to spread around.
The Miami native looks at her pursuit of stardom as answering a calling—not just to be famous, but to do something with that visibility.
"Being a star is more than just occupying the space of entertainment or making someone laugh, or acting like a character," she explained. "I think it's about people being able to see a fragment or a piece of themselves through you. Everybody wants to be a star, but will they take what comes along with it?"
Madison continued, "RuPaul is on assignment, I'm on assignment about creating world change, and I think that a lot of times people are not really prepared for what comes along with that. There are ups and downs, there are lonely times, there's your personal life that's sacrificed, there's public scrutiny. You have to walk a fine line on all types of stuff."
So when it comes to leaving hearts and minds more open than when she found them, "I knew that there was something that I had to do before I leave this place and go to the next station," Madison said. "I do believe that I was strategically positioned—no matter what my background was, no matter what my sordid past was—to help bring about change in the world for a community of people."
In the meantime, seeing women like Madison succeeding is a big deal in and of itself.
For the girls staying at Ts Madison Starter House, "I'd like for them to know that, if they've seen it, they can do it," she said. "You may not know how, you may not know when, but know you can do it. I never knew how, I never knew when, I just knew. You have to walk in knowing that something is going to change."
Of course, Madison also knew she'd better work if she wanted to turn her dreams into reality.
"I believed that I was going to be who I am," she said, "but I also walked in and positioned myself to do that. You have to know your purpose. You have to know you're greater than where you are, and then you have to pursue it, no matter the obstacles."
And she's playing the long game.
"My ultimate dream for those individuals who find solace in my home," Madison said, "I want them to go out in the world and run the torch farther than I could ever have imagined it to be. I want them to take the skills I learned and apply it to themselves and just go for it—and change the world for the person after them."
—Reporting by Charles O'Keefe