If you were a closeted teen in the late ‘90s, chances are you remember exactly where you were the first time you saw Cruel Intentions. Maybe you were watching it on a scratched Blockbuster rental under the guise of loving Shakespeare adaptations. Maybe you paused the VHS on that kiss between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair. Or maybe—and let’s not lie to ourselves—you were deeply fixated on Pacey from Dawson’s Creek giving a BJ to a hot football jock.
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Now, 25 years later, Joshua Jackson is reminding us that he did that—and he’s doing it with the kind of cheeky honesty that proves he still understands the assignment.
In a new interview with Men’s Health, the 47-year-old actor took a trip down memory lane to his brief but extremely formative role in the 1999 teen erotic thriller Cruel Intentions. Jackson played Blaine Tuttle, a smirking, scheming, gay high schooler who was not only out, but weaponized his sexuality with unbothered flair. And yes—there’s that scene.
“I wasn’t on Cruel Intentions very much, but I do believe that my first day on this movie was giving a man head,” Jackson casually told Men’s Health.
@menshealthmag Joshua Jackson’s first day on Cruel Intentions involved… WHAT??! #fyp
Somewhere, a thousand gay Millennials just clutched their pearls.
The scene in question? Blaine is caught in bed mid-blowjob with closeted jock Greg McConnell (played by Eric Mabius). Blink and you’ll miss it, but the moment burned itself into the memory of anyone watching with wide eyes and an awakening heart.
And for a straight 19-year-old actor at the time, the experience was… intense.
Jackson, who identifies as straight, has long been praised for his openness in taking on queer roles and supporting LGBTQ+ representation—despite not being part of the community himself.
“And that can be stressful for a 19-year-old heterosexual boy, to sit in a room, and give another man a blowjob,” he said.
The quote is part of Men’s Health’s “Stress Test” video series, where celebrities unpack professionally stressful moments. For Jackson, playing Blaine meant jumping right into the deep end—literally on his first day of shooting.
“So my stress test on this was to commit myself to this job that I had taken on and really made sure that I was all in, so to speak,” he added.
Sir. “All in,” you say?
But truly, it’s this blend of humor and humility that makes Jackson’s reflections so satisfying. He doesn’t tiptoe around the queerness of the role or dismiss it as a “phase” in his career. Instead, he owns the absurdity, honors the impact, and manages to look back with the grace of someone who knows exactly what that moment meant—for viewers, not just for him.
And then, there’s the epilogue we didn’t know we needed.
Years after filming, Jackson had a chance reunion with Eric Mabius—the man on the receiving end of that now-iconic scene—when Mabius moved into Jackson’s neighborhood. As Jackson tells it:
“She’s like, oh, how do you guys know each other? And two of us, now well into our 30s, both blushed scarlet red,” he recalled. “Like, how do you explain what that connection was?”
You don’t, really. You just say “We were in a movie” and leave out the very specific choreography involved.
But for queer audiences, there is something to explain. Because in a film full of seductive power plays and repressed sexuality, Blaine Tuttle stood out. He wasn’t tragic. He wasn’t a punchline. He was hot, funny, manipulative—and totally unrepentant. For many young queer people watching in the ‘90s, that was revelatory.
And now, decades later, Joshua Jackson’s willingness to revisit that role—not with embarrassment, but with a wink—is more than just fun gossip. It’s a reminder that gay stories, even the fleeting ones, matter. Especially the ones that dared to show desire on our own terms.
Blaine might not have had much screen time, but he lives rent-free in our collective gay consciousness. And thanks to Jackson’s memory (and that suspiciously detailed recall), he’s not going anywhere.
So here’s to the teen movie that was hornier than it had any right to be, and to the straight guy who fake-gave head on day one and still turned in a legacy-defining performance.
Long live Pacey Witter. But even longer live Blaine Tuttle—the real queer icon in pastel Lacoste.
Source: Men’s Health
” Jackson, who identifies as straight, has long been praised for his openness in taking on queer roles “, um, what other roles has he played besides this one that were LGBTQ ?? Also, why is Blaine considered something to consider an icon? Yeah, he wasn’t tragic, and was unreptenant…but he was also helping to blackmail another closeted teen. If he’d been straight in the movie, we would hate him, so why are we expected to love him in this, because he’s cute and it’s a sex scene ? I’m sorry, the morals on this are seriously twisted. This movie, like HEATHERS, has not aged well. Oh, and furthermore..although Jackson was cute back then, Mabius was the hot one in that scene.
Concur, Mabius was hot AF.