Pay for gay

Can I just pull aside the smalltown gays for a quick second – I need to discuss something in confidence.

I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves in a similar position when we’re 18 (for legal reasons, of course we were 18): the only Grindr profiles are faceless, three miles away, and double, triple your age.

Under both UK and US labour laws, you’re not allowed to ask someone to tell you their sexuality before you hire them. Is Nick Kroll queer?

From what I can tell, he isn’t. Andrew Rannells, who plays Cole, is openly gay. Authentic casting doesn’t just bring lived experience to the screen; it changes what kinds of stories get told, and how deeply they resonate.

Not affection, not intimacy — just access. We click. Because these performances are in the service of the vision of queer directors, we are probably less likely to consider them inauthentic – I’d certainly be more enthused about watching a straight actor in a Todd Haynes film than, say, Ben Platt playing Disney’s tenth “first gay character” in a live-action remake of The Emperor’s New Groove.

Sterling K. Brown was nominated for “American Fiction”. But what if we’re asking the wrong question?

What if studios aren’t ready to bet on queerness unless it’s buffered—by straight actors, by softened scripts, by “relatable” packaging? Because it makes you feel 14 again and terrified in the best and worst way.

So when a straight man takes his top off and lets you watch him jerk off for tips — it’s thrilling.

Now. Can’t accom.”

Next thing you know, you’re bent over the front seat of a Renault Clio, gagging slightly on a cocktail of Lynx Africa and one of those Magic Tree air fresheners that smells like radioactive vanilla.

“One of the things that often gets overlooked in this conversation is just because a gay actor is playing a gay role doesn’t mean that that gay role or the gay actor is going to be good.

He’s got 50k followers and a link in bio, offering a £9.99 subscription to what’s essentially your adolescent gay panic rebranded as content.

And we keep clicking.

Because it’s the same story. “Maybe I’d prefer to be represented by a gorgeous, sexy, well-adjusted straight guy than a clapped gay man… I just don’t know.”

“To reduce queerness to something that is very definable and recognisable based on the past sexual experiences doesn’t necessarily serve the work in question” – Kyle Turner

According to Kyle Turner, a film critic and the author of The Queer Film Guide – 100 Great Movies That Tell LGBTQIA+ Stories, there is a rich history of independent queer auteurs working with straight actors: Pedro Almodovar and Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory (and many other films); Cate Blanchett and Julianne Moore in the work of Todd Haynes; Joseph Gordon Levitt in Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin; Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix in Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho.

“Someone like Andrew Scott is at a fame level where he is going to get offered loads of roles, gay or straight, and he can make decisions. It’s not that ‘queer actors must play queer roles’; it’s about giving people work and opportunities. I wanted to be wanted.

And he smelled like shit.

It’s fine. But the performative, algorithmic version of it — the kind that uses “bro” in the captions and pretends to be shocked that gay men are watching — that’s new.

Straight men — or at least, straight-posturing men — have long been positioned as the pinnacle of homoerotic desire. Because deep down, we’ve been taught that their approval means something. Jared Leto won for “Dallas Buyers Club”. They don’t carry the years of working out who you are when everyone’s already decided for you.

They don’t wake up with it.
They don’t walk home with it.

But we still want them.

He wanted release.