Matt Bomer has taken on a role we don’t see too often in the entertainment industry: the gay superhero. His performance as Larry Trainor on the HBO Max/DC Universe series Doom Patrol is no doubt relatable in the 2020 world we are living in given the type of person he is playing.
Doom Patrol is unlike many other comic book type series in that it isn’t your run of the mill kind of show that includes a lot of heroic type moments, capes and whatnot. It centers on a bunch of misfit characters just struggling to come to terms with who they are, making the program that much more relatable to an audience that may not like this genre in the first place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TusmSgYoDhQ
Matt plays Larry Trainor (comic nickname Negative Man), a former pilot and closeted gay man who was in an accident that left him permanently scarred while sharing a body with a seemingly immortal and sentient being.
What makes things even worse is that his internalized queerphobia was taking place before the crash and left him completely wracked with guilt after it. In turn he hid his sexuality from his family and loved ones, something that is quite relatable to a number of people who have had to do the same.
“I’d never seen that particular story told on screen before,” he told Digital Spy. “Someone who had to sacrifice so much of who they were in order to achieve what they wanted; including the cost of the fallout, in terms of their relationships with everyone around them, and how that affected those people as well.”
The former Will & Grace star likens his experience working on Doom Patrol to that of “a really great drama”, explaining that Larry is “one of the most three-dimensional, fully realised gay characters [he’s] ever gotten to play.”
New episodes of Doom Patrol are released every Thursday on HBO Max.