Out actor Russell Tovey is finally opening up about his experience on the short-lived HBO series Looking.
The actor, 41, who played Jonathan Groff's boss turned lover Kevin says that the response from locals (the show, which is about a group of gay friends in San Francisco and was shot on location) about the show nearly broke him.
via Attitude:
Speaking to The Independent Tovey mentioned the project when discussing taking on gay roles. As well as Looking, Tovey has starred as gay characters in Years and Years, Pride, The Pass, and American Horror Story: NYC.
The Attitude Award winner has previously said he was sad the series had such a limited run and would like to bring it back. He was also disappointed by the lacklustre response to the show’s debut in 2014.
“The critical narrative at the beginning was that nothing much happened in it. That it was too boring. But it was just real life!”
Tovey recalled filming scenes in San Francisco for season two and being recognised by locals.
“They’d say, ‘You’re in Looking!… but I’ve not watched it, I’ve heard it’s boring’. They hadn’t even seen it! And it’s about you, in your city, filming outside your coffee shop, and you’re not even intrigued to watch it?
“It really, really frustrated me. It broke me, honestly. If that show came out now, it’d have a completely different response.”
The actor, who is starring in Blue Now also discussed the impact shows like Heartstopper and Glee have had for younger generations of LGBTQ people.
“If we had them shows when I was growing up, I would have felt a bit better about myself. I’m so proud of the way the world is now.
“For young kids to be able to say, ‘Cool, I’ll watch Glee tonight and then go to a gay bar’ – that is an incredible gift that’s been handed down. But we must pay respect and remember where that gift came from.”
Blue Now will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Derek Jarman’s Blue. It will be performed live in Brighton, Margate, Manchester, and London across May.
I absolutely loved Looking when it first came out, and I was bummed when HBO cancelled it. Reviving the show could work, since they are bringing back Noah's Arc as a movie, and they attempted to remake Queer As Folk for a Gen Z audience.
I know people considered the series to be a bit boring, but I thought it was a pretty realistic portrayal of gay men. I've heard people whine so many times over the years about the lack of real characters on TV, and here they actually created a show that gave y'all what you wanted and you didn't support it.
So stop going by the opinions of others and when something comes out geared towards a specific audience, whether good or bad watch it for yourself before you make your assessment.
In other news, Russell, who's starring in Blue, Now opened up about his fear of death growing up during the AIDS crisis, and how it had a profound impact upon his identity as a gay man.
Here's what he revealed in an interview with The Independent: “As a gay person, you’re so closely linked to death,” he said. “When I came out [at the age of 18 in 1999], the first thing people thought was: ‘You’ve gotta protect yourself… you could get HIV.’ This wasn’t that long ago.”
By 1994, AIDS-related illnesses had become the leading cause of death for Americans aged between 25 and 44, and by 1999 the World Health Organization had announced HIV/AIDS was the fourth biggest killer worldwide across all ages.
“I’ve been thinking about dying in a really painful way from the age of f**king 12. If you’re a queer person of a certain generation, you think about death daily. Every time you go to bed with someone, there’s the potential that they could be the person [who] makes you sick. That’s what was in my mind.”
I totally get where Russell is coming from, because if you grew up during a certain time particularly in the 90s, contracting HIV/AIDS was definitely a fear that went through many of our minds.
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