“We’re living in a time of extremes,” Murray Bartlett tells V.F. “There’s something that feels very right about characters just losing their shit.”
but it does feel like these pretty wild, unique queer characters you’re taking on now didn’t have much of a place onscreen even a few years ago. Does it feel like your rise, so to speak, in Hollywood runs has run in parallel to that—the gay roles that are out there, and that you can perhaps deepen?
I know what you’re saying. This sounds really cheesy, but as you navigate your way as an actor, you want to have a range of roles and you don’t want to get stuck in a box with the types of characters that you’re playing. I do want to play a wide range of characters if I can. However, the opportunity to still nudge boundaries and deepen the understanding of what it is to be a gay or queer person is so exciting to me.
I also think of it in a less perhaps serious key, but still in the way experience can inform narrative, withand the infamous rimming scene. Because you and Lukas Gage came up with that on the spot, right?hadn’t considered it—he was very mindful of us doing whatever we felt comfortable with and not making us uncomfortable in any way—so he gave it over to us to talk about what we felt comfortable with, and we came up with that.
All of these shows are, to various extents, weird. They’re off-kilter and offbeat and surprising, which allows you to go to various extremities and places that most actors don’t get to go to in shows.I didn’t have many opportunities where I was able to do that. So it was really amazing to have that opportunity drop in my lap in that way.