Apparently, outing is becoming something of a trend. After Aaron Schock was maybe/kinda/sorta outed recently, it seems that Sir Ian McKellen may have outed a few of his co-stars from The Hobbit films. Looks like someone just planted a garden of oopsy-daisies.
According to Queerty, McKellen was giving an interview to brash.de, a German-language site. The interview eventually turned to his status as an openly gay actor, and . . . Well, here’s where things get a bit muddy. According to a translation (apparently via Google Translate) from Queerty, this is what McKellen says:
“I would say that has been done in this regard in the last ten years in the industry a lot. Just look only how many openly gay actors in The Hobbit with were: two of the dwarves, to Luke Evans, Stephen Fry, Lee Pace. In The Lord of the Rings I was the only one next to it there was my make-up artist and one from the wardrobe team. That’s only once a progress, right?”
As evidenced by some of the grammar and syntax errors, the translation is a bit iffy. Although based on what some of the German-speaking commenters are saying, the translation is pretty accurate if somewhat rough.
Of course, Fry’s been out for years, while Evans came out quietly a couple years back to little fanfare. The big surprise is Pace, who’s never commented one way or another in regard to his sexuality. And since Adam Brown (who played Ori the dwarf) is apparently openly gay, there’s still one dwarf that McKellen is referring to.
Part of me thinks this may have been a slip of the tongue; on the other hand, McKellen’s whip smart, which makes me think (or at least hope) that everyone he spoke about was stable enough in their relationships that this alleged outing isn’t going to be a huge deal.
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