Dannii Minogue on LGBTQ+ allyship: ‘I don’t want anyone to feel like they’re always fighting to just be themselves’ (EXCLUSIVE)

My professional relationship with Dannii Minogue has, over the past few years, become an annual check-in that consistently reveals the substance behind the star. The first time we met, in 2023, was for an interview to promote the first series of I Kissed a Boy. A year later, we met again to talk about the follow-up, I Kissed a Girl. It was after that second interview that Minogue approached me as I was preparing to leave. She was holding a huge bag of beads from the Rainbow Shoelace Project, an anti-bullying initiative founded by 14-year-old queer Australian Abbie Jane. Minogue was so committed to the cause that she had physically brought a huge bag of Abbie’s beads with her all the way from Australia to London, determined for Attitude to help promote the project. Because of Minogue, those beads have been a regular fixture in our events’ gift bags ever since.

So, it feels fitting, almost inevitable, that Minogue is the recipient of this year’s Ally Award at the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards, powered by Jaguar. After all, she’s been showing up for the LGBTQ+ community long before it was expected, and long since she was explicitly advised not to.

Today’s meeting is at a studio in east London amid a week-long Tube strike. London is at a standstill, so Minogue arrives a little late, apologetic, traffic-worn, but glowing all the same. She’s bare-faced, hair loose, but still looking younger than her years. Spotting me, she grins, “It’s like our yearly tradition now.” Later, as her makeup artist works to an 80s playlist, she belts out the odd “Oh, yeah!” or playful whoop as hits from Whitney and the like pop up, delighting the bank of Attitude staffers tapping away on laptops in the background. By the time we sit down together, she’s in full glam, a silk robe wrapped around her petite frame, delicately nibbling on a Pret salad.

“He was very flamboyant, and I just loved everything about him” – Dannii Minogue on her first gay friend

Dannii Minogue and the LGBTQ+ community go way back. When asked about her first queer connection, she immediately thinks of Bill, a makeup artist she worked with as a child. “He was really great, just, like, a solid person, comforting, a shoulder to cry on, would pep you up, very like a parent, but also like a friend,” she tells me. “He was very flamboyant, and I just loved everything about him, like, his nature, but also the fact that he was just so comfortable in himself.”

This early exposure to someone living so comfortably in their own skin planted a seed of understanding. While Minogue didn’t know the term ‘allyship’ then, her experience as a child gave her a deep sense of understanding of what it means to be marginalised. “At school I got bullied, so I guess that gives you great empathy,” she explains. “Being a kid on TV and going to a regular school — and no one even spoke about bullying back then — I was always going into the principal’s office because I was being bullied.”

“I’ve been bullied throughout my life”

She pauses. “I’ve been bullied throughout my life, even as an adult and publicly. And then I think of my friends in the community who have to deal with that as well. It goes from your childhood into your life as an adult and it’s public or in the workplace. I think there’s a great empathy there.”

Minogue’s bond with the LGBTQ+ community truly solidified in the UK. When I ask whether there was a specific point in her career that she first realised her popularity with the gays, she immediately recalls the reception she received at the legendary G-A-Y club night at London’s Astoria. “I mean, definitely when I came to London and was performing at G-A-Y in 1997,” she says, defining the moment “that bond” became apparent. “The early G-A-Y shows, there was just no vibe like that. My friend Terry [Ronald] would be doing backing vocals, Ian Masterson was producing — it was so much fun.”

Back in the mid-90s, when Dannii began performing in gay clubs, managers and label bosses warned her against it. “They advised me not to do it, that it was dangerous,” she recalls. Her response was simple. “That’s where I wanted to perform. I thought, ‘Whatever people are going to say about me, let them say it.’ I’d rather be where I want to be, having a good time doing what I want to do with the people that I want to do it with, than trying to conform to someone else’s idea.”

“It was the very first time the rainbow had ever been projected on the Sydney Opera House”

From G-A-Y to WorldPride, Mardi Gras to The Greyhound gay bar in Melbourne, she reels off moments of connection that still give her goosebumps. One memory remains particularly poignant. “I did a launch for [Sydney] Mardi Gras [at the 40th anniversary in 2017], where I performed in front of the Sydney Opera House. I designed a dress with Sonia Cappellazzo. It was black, but underneath we had rainbow-coloured net. You could only see it when I pulled the dress up, like butterfly wings. I didn’t realise until after that it was the very first time the rainbow had ever been projected on the Sydney Opera House.”

Minogue’s allyship has often extended beyond the stage. In 2004, she became an ambassador for Terrence Higgins Trust, promoting its World AIDS Day campaign. “They wanted to get to a young audience and for it to be known by young people that HIV/AIDS isn’t something that’s only within the LGBTQ+ community, because it’s not,” she explains.

“Her story of being bullied at school was just… mind-blowing” – Dannii Minogue on Rainbow Shoelace Project’s teen founder

Her determination to support younger generations is also why she champions the Rainbow Shoelace Project. “I just found her [Abbie Jane] on Instagram,” she explains. “I messaged, knowing her mum was reading the messages, and kept saying to them, ‘I can just see this is something that needs to be amplified. And if I can help you do that, that would be cool.’”

Minogue, whose son is a similar age to Abbie, hints that part of her motivation is maternal. “She’s growing into a real woman, and she’s gone from starting this as a child with all those memories of packing the beads with her mum and her granddad. Her story of being bullied at school was just… mind-blowing.”

Our conversation turns to the importance of cisgender female allyship towards transgender people, a heavy but critical topic. Her response is deeply felt. “It’s so important. People need protection and I just wish we were in a place where it’s just about celebrating people.”

As the Ally Award makes clear, Dannii Minogue’s support for LGBTQ+ people has never been a performance. It’s an instinctive act, rooted in empathy and lived experience, a thread woven through her career since her days as a child star. From the defiance of her early performances to the quiet sincerity of her support, Dannii Minogue’s allyship has been a private conviction now made public. As she puts it, “I don’t want anyone to have to feel like they’re always fighting to just be themselves.”

Photographer: Mark Cant
Stylist: Shaquille Ross-Williams
Hair and make-up: Christian Vermaak

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This is an excerpt from a feature appearing in the 2025 Attitude Awards issue. To see the full feature, order your copy of the Attitude Awards 2025 issue now or read it alongside 15 years of back issues on the free Attitude app.