In a video interview with LGBT glossy
The Advocate, out actor Charlie Carver talked about the
positive response he received after coming out gay in 2016.
Carver is currently promoting two Ryan
Murphy-produced Netflix dramas.
In Ratched, which began
streaming on Friday, he plays Huck Finnigan, an orderly at Lucas
State Hospital. The show includes gay themes.
The Boys in the Band premieres
on Netflix on September 30. The film adaptation of the Broadway
revival includes an all-gay cast. Carver shares the screen with Jim
Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Andrew Rannells, Matt Bomer, Robin de Jesus,
Tuc Watkins, Michael Benjamin Washington, and Brian Hutchison.
(Related: Netflix
releases first trailer for gay drama Boys
in the Band.)
“Some awful stuff happens in the
play, and these characters are dealing with pretty difficult
circumstances,” Carver said. “Being gay in New York City in 1968
was awful. If you risked being visible in any kind of way, you risk
being arrested or named in the paper or completely rejected by
society at large.”
“[B]ut there is a sort of
quintessential queer spirit in [the story].”
“I've definitely had friends over
with too much alcohol around and the shade starts getting thrown. And
it's very funny, but it's very barbed, and sometimes it can go too
far. But it's also this level of play and intimacy that I think is
particular to the gay male experience, all of it, and so to see that
from 50 years ago and have it feel so immediate is really heartening.
It gives you a sense of something that endures,” he said.
Carver, 32, came out in 2016 in a
series of Instagram posts. He said he's “intensely grateful” for
the positive response he received.
“I didn't know what would happen,”
he
said. “To have kind of other champions in this business who
gave me a chance, Ryan Murphy being one of them, they saw something
in me and they let me be a part of it. Then opportunities led to
other opportunities … I started kind of stepping into myself, and I
believe when you do that, doors open.”