In the 80s, I started dressing the way I wanted to dress, and nobody said anything to me. When I performed, I didn’t perform in a tuxedo or tails. I always wore an African chieftain outfits. I love the way they flow, the material, the variety, the color. All of those things appeal to me enormously.

Wearing those clothes, did you feel more yourself then than you did during Mister Rogers?

Yes. I feel like royalty. As soon as I put on my one of those African dashikis, especially long robes that have two or three layers, all I have to do is put the tiara on and I am royalty.

Tell me you really do have a tiara.

I have three or four, are you kidding? [Laughs] And people start bowing! “Hello, sir.” Oh, I get a lot when I put those tiaras on with my outfits. You don’t know the half of it! I also have an alter ego at Halloween and other parties: I play the black Queen Victoria. Oh dear, we have so much fun! So yeah, I dress the way I want to now. I wouldn’t tolerate somebody telling me how to dress.

In one doc clip, Mr. Rogers is asked if he is “square” during an interview with Tom Snyder. Why did people think Mr. Rogers might be gay?

He was a soft man. But our society is changing. Women are standing taller and men are leaning in that direction. . . . I’m strongest when I’m feminine.

His wife, Joanne Rogers, says in the film that she and Mr. Rogers had many gay friends. Did you know this to be true?

Yes, I knew a couple of them! I knew them very well. Not just casually, but very well. We haven’t mentioned their names because a couple of them have died, and also if they wanted to be more public, they would [have] said so or done so, and so I do it out of respect for them. Because there was a time when nobody came out.

In the documentary, you refer to Mr. Rogers as your “surrogate father.” When did you know that he was someone you could confide in as a father figure?

Oh, I know exactly when that was: on April 4, after Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. That was a tremendous blow to me personally and politically and emotionally. My world was absolutely shattered. And I was living in what they call Schenley Heights in Pittsburgh, a black bougie neighborhood. . . . When April 4 came and Dr. King was assassinated, they were burning down the Hill District [a historically black neighborhood in Pittsburgh], which was six, seven blocks from [me]. I had only been there eight or nine months, and I was terrified of what was going to happen. I remember Fred Rogers called me and said, “Franc, what are you doing? How are you doing?” He knew where I lived. And at one point he said, “We’re concerned about your safety. We don’t like that you’re over there. I’m coming to get you.”

And he got you?

Yeah. I never had someone express that kind of deep sense of protection for me . . . and that experience drew Fred and me really, really close. I thought, Well, this is the real thing right here.

How do you think Mr. Rogers spoke to kids who were gay or one day would realize they were?

I think what you get from Fred—I certainly did—is that he didn’t judge. . . . I talked to him about something I had never spoken to anybody about, and that is that I wanted to have children. He’s the one who said to me, “You need to think very clearly about this, what it is that you want.” What I was doing, I realize more and more, was I was nurturing children as though I were a woman. . . . I started mothering children in my community who were abandoned or near abandoned or very, very neglected. That’s how I began to have cosmic children—that’s what I call them.

Now, I have at least 700, 800 cosmic children up here at Middlebury College, because what you realize that is that money isn’t everything. Poor little rich kids do exist. I finally satisfied that hunger inside of myself to give this kind of love to the world—and Fred was the one who said to me, “Be very clear on what you want to do, and do it, understanding that there will be those who can accept and those who cannot.” Fortunately, I’ve never found anybody who did not accept it.