" How to Get Away with Murder " star Jack Falahee, who’s been steaming up TV screens with his gay sex scenes, expounded further on why he’s not announcing his sexual orientation any time soon.
In a recent interview in Out that received lots of social media attention, he’d said it “seems reductive” to note his sexual orientation publicly, explaining that he doesn’t think it "accomplishes anything other than quenching the thirst of curiosity," and opined that, "no matter how I answer, someone will say, ‘No, that’s not true.’"
Speaking with me on SiriusXM Progress, Falahee, who replied “Yeah, sure,” when asked if it’s important for young LGBT people to see out actors and celebrities, further explained his thinking on why, in his case, he’s not discussing whether he’s straight, gay or bisexual.
“I was basically trying to say [in that interview], for me it’s like asking an actor who plays an alcoholic what their relationship is with alcohol,” he explained. “It’s not necessarily — I think we’re projecting onto actors in a way. I think we’re expecting them to be their characters when, at the end of the day, this is my job and I’m an actor portraying a role on a fictitious television show.”
But an actor who plays an alcoholic might be asked what he brings to the role and if he’s had that experience in his life. If people ask what an actor like Falahee, whose character, Conor Walsh, had lots of hook-up sex with various men last season, brings to the role of a gay man, isn’t the interviewer simply asking what he brings to the experience?
“Right, but that wasn’t the question,” Falahee replied. “The question was, ‘How do I define my sexuality?' And that’s a very different question than asking — actually we were in Atlanta, for the ATL TV Fest, and a young woman, she actually had a really great question. She said, ‘What personal experience do you bring to portray — what did she say? — a ‘manwhore’ homosexual on television?’”
“And you know, I was like, that is a great question,” he continued. “That is a different question than how do I define my sexuality. And to answer that question, I would say, well, you know, I went to NYU, and the Tisch School of Drama, and there we studied Stanislavski-based acting techniques. And while I have dabbled in the Lee Strasberg method of sense-memory and using your own experience to portray a character, I found that that was a fast track, maybe, to therapy. And so, I fell more into the Stella Adler method of acting camp, and create fictitious circumstances….I’m creating circumstances in which Conor exists to accurately portray him..I just think it’s interesting because I have a body of work before Conor Walsh that is primarily heterosexual and yet people want to ask — you know, no on asks any other man, or woman, on my show, about their sexuality, and that’s what fascinates me."
He then added, “We don’t ask the actor playing James Bond what his sexual preference is. So I don’t know what it is, really, with trying to out actors who portray gay characters on television. But it is some sort of fascination in society.”
Before You Go
