Micky Angelo Petrillo, the New Jersey-born trans advocate and filmmaker whose story of transitioning at 59 has moved audiences across the country, will be a guest this Saturday, August 1, on Loose Lips, the popular podcast co-hosted by award-winning comedian Ike Avelli.
For Petrillo, every conversation is a chance to hand someone else the courage he spent decades searching for. Born Michele Angela Petrillo on January 3, 1964, and raised in an Italian, Catholic, working-class household in New Jersey, he carried a quiet, unnamed ache from earliest childhood — a sense of not belonging in his own life that followed him through softball fields, heartbreak, grief, and years of hard-won healing. In June 2023, following a frightening experience abroad that forced a reckoning he could no longer postpone, Petrillo finally said his own name out loud. Within months, he began testosterone therapy, legally became Micky Angelo Petrillo in the eyes of the court, and underwent surgery — arriving at his 60th birthday, on January 3, 2024, as himself in full: physically, legally, emotionally.
“It only took 59 years to figure that out,” Petrillo has said of the moment everything finally made sense.
That honesty — delivered with disarming humor and zero self-pity — is the beating heart of The Man I Was Born to Be, the documentary Petrillo is producing about his journey. The film had is now being prepared for submission to major festivals including Frameline, Outfest, and Tribeca. More than 100 contributors have already stepped forward to help bring it to the screen.
On Saturday’s Loose Lips, listeners can expect the same warmth and unflinching candor that has defined Petrillo’s growing presence as a speaker and advocate: the family who loved him even when they didn’t yet understand him, the therapist who held the door open for twenty-five years until he was ready to walk through it, and the joy — hard-earned and unmistakable — of finally recognizing his own reflection. It is a fitting stage; Avelli, a longtime champion of the LGBTQ+ community and a past Get Out Magazine LGBT Comedian of the Year, has built Loose Lips into a space where real stories are given room to breathe.
“This isn’t just my story,” Petrillo has said. “It’s about using humor and radical honesty to change how the world sees the trans community.”
Micky Angelo Petrillo continues to speak, screen, and show up — proof that reinvention has no expiration date, and that the truest measure of courage is choosing joy on the other side of it.
Loose Lips airs this Saturday, August 1. For more on Micky Angelo Petrillo, his story, and the documentary The Man I Was Born to Be, visit mickyangelopetrillo.com.
It took him 59 years to become himself — and he isn’t finished telling the world about it.
