Russell Tovey is many things: a gay icon with puppy-dog eyes, a man who once said he owed his arms to lifting his dog, and someone who can rip your heart out with a single line of dialogue in Looking. But beneath the charm and the cheekbones is someone who’s carried the weight of history in his bones—and who isn’t shy about saying exactly what needs to be said.
In a recent interview with i paper, the Years and Years actor spoke candidly about the emotional whiplash of being a gay man who came of age in the shadow of the AIDS crisis, and how that compares to the radically different landscape the younger “Heartstopper generation” now walks into.
“How lucky they are!” he says. “How wonderful that is!”
If you’ve ever had to pause Netflix to cry over an It’s A Sin monologue or a particularly tender moment in Heartstopper, you’ll understand why Tovey’s reflection feels both joyous and bruised. For many, it’s a kind of survivor’s guilt—watching younger queer people blossom where once we were just trying not to wither.
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Russell came out in the ’90s, during a time when simply existing as a gay teen meant doing it without validation, without protection, and often—without hope. He talks about the damage inflicted by Section 28, a piece of Thatcher-era legislation that actively tried to erase queer identities from the classroom and the conversation.
“Section 28 f**ked me up,” he says plainly. It’s not the kind of line you dress up in lace; it’s one you let stand with all its bruises.
He also recalls how “coming of age, realising that I liked men at the same time as AIDS. I would constantly mix sex and death. To have a generation that doesn’t even consider death around sex blows my mind.”
That line sits heavy, doesn’t it? For many older queer people, sex was never just sex. It was a tightrope walk over an abyss, covered in shame and misinformation. And now, there’s a generation learning to love without fear of dying. It’s a beautiful evolution, but one that Russell warns not to take for granted.
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“We can’t forget that time. It’s too important. It’s history now, but who’s to say it couldn’t all happen again?”
And here’s where things come full circle.
When the UK Supreme Court ruled earlier this year to uphold a trans-exclusionary definition of “woman,” Russell didn’t just have an opinion—he had emotion. He became “visibly emotional,” the interviewer noted, while referencing a brutal déjà vu for anyone who’s ever been publicly othered.
“Derek Jarman said in the late 80s that if you wait long enough the world moves in circles,” Tovey recalled. “There was blatant homophobia in the red-tops and the government. It was horrific. Then we had this great moment of openness.
“Now the transphobia is horrific. No feeling is finite. The world keeps spinning. You have to hope that it will turn around again. It’s f**king horrible at the minute. It’s just horrible.”
He’s not wrong. If history rhymes, then we’re hearing a chorus we thought we’d retired. The attacks may have shifted targets—from gay men to trans people—but the vitriol sounds eerily familiar.
But Tovey doesn’t leave us in despair. He doubles down on something both radical and deceptively simple: visibility.
He closes the interview by saying it’s important to keep making queer art so that we can “prove existence.”
That’s it. Not for applause. Not for branding. Not for clout. But to say: We are here. We have always been here.
And so Russell Tovey keeps doing what he’s always done—using his voice, his art, and yes, his heart, to give shape to the truth. Whether he’s playing a closeted cop, a confused lover, or a gay man reckoning with the ghosts of Thatcher’s Britain, he’s part of a lineage of queer storytellers who remind us not only what we’ve survived—but that we’re still surviving.
Because while the world may move in circles, so do we. Not in retreat, but in revolution.
Source: The i Paper