Actor Andrew Garfield is the latest Hollywood star to seemingly engage in the controversial PR tactic known as “ queerbaiting ” by claiming to be gay as a way to better “connect” with the LGBTQ community.
Writers for the Huffington Post note that the English performer and lead of The Amazing Spider-Man movies, 33, made the surprising “ admission ” during a recent panel discussion of Angels in America , the Tony Kushner-directed play themed around the early days of the AIDS epidemic that’s currently being revived in London.
Garfield portrays Lewis Ironside in the updated production, a gay man who goes on to learn of his own AIDS diagnosis throughout the course of Angels , and says he prepared to fill the shoes of the fictional homosexual by, first, watching back-to-back episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race with his close friends.
“Every Sunday, I would have eight friends over and we would just watch Ru,” Andrew said to the audience at the panel discussion, according to Out .
“I mean every single series of RuPaul’s Drag Race . I mean every series,” Garfield continued.
“This is my life outside of this play. I am a gay man right now, just without the physical act, that’s all.”
Andrew, who was once famously attached to his Amazing female co-star Emma Stone, who also appeared with Garfield in the 2014 follow-up of the reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 , before calling it quits with one another in 2015 as E! News details, clarified a few minutes later that he hadn’t actually done anything with a person of the same sex just yet.
Andrew Garfield said he’s “a gay man right now just without the physical act” https://t.co/o5qQXIkZfO pic.twitter.com/ALhQUBzibb
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) July 5, 2017
“As far as I know, I am not [actually] a gay man,” Andrew went on, before insinuating that his current sexual preference could change somewhere later in life.
“Maybe I’ll have an awakening later in my life, which I’m sure will be wonderful and I’ll get to explore that part of the garden, but right now I’m secluded to my area, which is wonderful, as well,” Garfield says.
A popular contemporary of Andrew Garfield’s, actor and singer Nick Jonas, has often been criticized by the LGBTQ community for similar queerbaiting acts, including a May 2016 Huffington Post interview where the “Closer” vocalist alluded to being “ experienced ” in gay sex after acting out a same-sex love scene on Kingdom , as his character.
[Featured Image by Matt Winkelmeyer/Stringer/Getty Images]
