Luke Evans’ latest movie role is the first to reflect his queer authentic self.
The Welsh actor stars opposite Billy Porter in “Our Son,” which premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival last weekend. The film follows Nicky (played by Evans) and Gabriel (Porter), a same-sex married couple who are engaged in a bitter custody dispute over their 8-year-old son, Owen (Christopher Woodley), as they inch toward divorce.
Though Evans’ résumé includes starring roles in Disney’s live-action remake of “Beauty and the Beast” and other blockbusters, the actor had not portrayed a gay role in a major film until “Our Son,” directed by Bill Oliver.
“I’ve been ready to take that step for ages. I just haven’t found the right story [until now],” he told People in an interview published Tuesday. “Divorce is as right for a gay couple as marriage, and I hadn’t really seen that, and when I read it, every time I’ve read the script, I wept.”
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He went on to note: “So I just thought, ‘Maybe this is a good time, and this is a good role to pick up and do.’”
These days, Evans is in a relationship with boyfriend Fran Tomas, a graphic designer from Spain. The couple made their red carpet debut at a UNICEF event in December.
Still, the actor has endured criticism in recent years amid claims he’d been reluctant to make a statement about sexuality as his Hollywood career was on the rise.
“My career was public, I was photographed, and all that stuff,” he told Attitude magazine in 2020. “My personal life just became the last thing that I had. Also, what was strange was that when people did find out that I was gay, there was a lot of articles and stuff written saying that I was hiding it, and I wasn’t.”
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Raised a Jehovah’s Witness, Evans left his home and religion at age 16 in order to pursue an acting career.
In his chat with Attitude, he said that decision made speculation he’d deliberately stayed closeted more hurtful: “I just wanted to get online and I wanted to pick up the phone and say, ‘Do you realize I left home at 16 because I was gay?’ I went into the world as a kid, because I had to.”
As for “Our Son,” Evans described working on the film as “traumatic at times, painful at times, very real, very visceral and very relatable.”
“You don’t have to be gay to enjoy this or understand this story,” he explained to People. “Families break up all the time, but this is the story of hope, and how they get through it, and how a new chapter is started, but a different kind of chapter.”