Russell Tovey on coming out as gay and making out with a straight actor on “American Horror Story: NYC”

\The gorgeous and talented and openly gay Russell Tovey of Looking and Quantico fame was interviewed by Marc Malkin for the Tovey says in the Just For Variety podcast.

Here are some excerpts:

On being advised not to come out publicly: “I remember thinking, ‘I’m hearing you. Thank you very much. I appreciate your advice, but I’m going to do this because this feels authentic to me.’ This feels important to me. It feels important to my life outside of my pretend life of playing all these characters. I have to have the stability to know who I am outside of this.”I don’t regret it on any level because my career has taken me somewhere really exciting. And I’ve played so many queer guys, queer characters that have brought me so much joy and I feel like have brought a lot of people joy and changed, set the dial somewhere else for people.”

Sex scenes on “American Horror Story: New York City: Of course, there was an intimacy coordinator on set, but Tovey says he was never uncomfortable filming the show’s most explicit scenes, including one in which he makes out and whips a character played by straight actor Zach Meiser. “There is an anxiety that kicks in that you go, ‘This is a straight guy, I’m a gay guy, openly, and we’re going to be kissing now.’ And we did it and then his tongue slipped in and then they cut and he went to me, ‘I just slipped my tongue in there…Is that all right?’ I said, ‘If it’s all right with you.’”

They continued shooting the sequence. “The next time we did it, I was like, ‘This guy is up for it! This guy’s committed. I absolutely love this, let’s go for it!’ So then we are like eating each other’s face, tongue in each other’s face. At one point I thought, ‘I’m going to spit in his mouth. No, don’t do that. That’s too much.’ I had to hold back. That’s when you get in trouble.”