In an interview this week with Vulture,
Jordan Gavaris, who plays a gay character on Orphan Black,
came out gay.
In the Canadian science fiction
thriller television series, Gavaris plays Sarah Manning's gay
brother, Felix Dawkins.
Now in its fifth and final season,
Orphan Black, which looks at the moral implications of human
cloning, premiered on March 30, 2013.
“I'm gay,” Gavaris answered when
asked about his sexual orientation.
Gavaris, 27, added that he's never been
asked abut his sexuality and that it shouldn't matter.
“I guess that’s where I’m at in
terms of coming out publicly: I had this position when I started on
the show that it shouldn’t matter,” he said. “And I believe
that. I hope that one day, the world gets to a place where you don’t
need to politicize your sexuality any more than someone needs to
politicize their race — that we can just act and we can exist in
this Zeitgeist, telling stories about one another. And that no one’s
afraid, maybe, to come out. But also that no one’s really
hyperobsessed with knowing whether or not someone’s gay. That would
be an amazing world to live in, where people don’t feel the need to
protect themselves and other people don’t feel the need to launch
an inquisition.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Gavaris
admitted that he's had opportunities to talk about his sexuality.
“It wasn't the right time,” he
said, adding that he felt bad about once evading the question.
The 27-year-old actor, who also talked
about meeting his boyfriend Devon Graye on Twitter, went on to say
that being out will lead to fewer acting opportunities.
“This is a tricky thing to say and
I’ve never actually said it out loud before, but I do believe that
jobs will be lost and I do believe jobs will be gained. Maybe not
even for the right reasons. There’s been a lot of conversation in
the industry about hiring openly gay actors for gay parts, and I
think that’s really important,” Gavaris
said. “But frankly, I’m not interested in doing any kind of
work where I couldn’t bring myself in totality to the character.
And if that would mean that I am ultimately not the right fit in
terms of casting, then I probably shouldn’t play that part anyways.
That’s not to say that’s an open license to discriminate against
openly gay actors. There’s a big distinction. It’s just that if
whatever somebody sees as gayness, whether it’s femininity or
hypersexuality or whatever they’ve decided constitutes being gay –
if those parts are not right for their character, chances are I don’t
want to work with those people and I probably don’t want to play
that character. I’m much more interested in playing characters,
even hetero characters, where I can bring all of myself. All of my
sexuality. Everything I’ve learned about my own femininity and my
own gender fluidity, I’d be interested in playing characters that
explore that. And I think we’re going to start seeing more of
them.”