Glee star Darren Criss stepped away from taking part in LGBTQ+ roles in 2018, saying he doesn’t wish to be “one other straight boy taking a homosexual man’s position”. (Getty)
Darren Criss, greatest identified for taking part in homosexual character Blaine Anderson in Glee, has stated that his upbringing means he’s “culturally queer”.
Criss appeared in Ryan Murphy’s musical-comedy-drama Glee from 2010 to 2015, as butter-voiced singer and on-again-off-again companion of Chris Colfer’s Kurt Hummel, regardless of Criss figuring out as heterosexual in his private life.
Showing on the Chicago Comedian & Leisure Expo over the weekend (27-28 April), Criss was requested what it was wish to be a part of such a groundbreaking TV relationship.
“It was f**king superior,” he replied. “These days, we simply name it a relationship on TV. However to contextualise it, a homosexual relationship on mainstream Fox, that’s a fairly cool factor to be part of,” he stated, based on Leisure Weekly.
Persevering with, Criss defined that his upbringing in San Francisco helped lend him an affinity with the LGBTQ+ neighborhood, and that he’s really a beforehand extraordinary sexual orientation: culturally queer.
“I’ve been so culturally queer my complete life,” he stated. “Not as a result of I’m making an attempt, I used to be gonna say not as a result of I’m making an attempt to be cool, however I’m gonna erase that, as a result of I am making an attempt to be cool. The issues in my life that I’ve tried to emulate, be taught from and be impressed by are 100 per cent queer as f**ok.
“It was in queer communities that I’ve discovered individuals I idolise. I’d say that’s a gross generalisation, that’s a variety of issues and lots of people. However I grew up in San Francisco within the ’90s. I watched males die.
“There was an consciousness of the homosexual expertise that was not a overseas idea to me. So, it was a story that I cared deeply about.”
Because the dialog surrounding queer characters being performed by LGBTQ+ actors obtained louder in recent times, Criss was one heterosexual star who publicly rejected the concept of taking over any homosexual roles sooner or later, regardless of the success doing so had introduced him.
He has additionally performed Andrew Cunanan, homosexual spree killer and assassin of Donatella Versace’s brother Gianni Versace, in Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
“I wish to make sure that I received’t be one other straight boy taking a homosexual man’s position,” Criss informed Bustle in 2018.
“The rationale I say that’s as a result of attending to play these characters is inherently a beautiful dramatic expertise. It has made for very compelling and fascinating individuals.”
Former Glee co-star Kevin McHale has additionally beforehand stated what everybody’s pondering, and declared in 2020 that Darren Criss was one thing that “feels homosexual, however isn’t” – a sentiment that Criss has accredited of.