Russell Tovey Opens Up About Disappointment With Gay Mens’ Response To “Looking”
British actor Russell Tovey has spoken out about his disappointment in the response of the gay community to the HBO series Looking. In an interview, Tovey expressed his frustration with gay men who had dismissed the show without even watching it, reports The Independent.
“It broke me…” – Russell Tovey
Looking premiered in 2014 and ran for two seasons. The plot followed the lives of a group of gay friends living in San Francisco. Tovey starred alongside Jonathan Groff, Frankie J Alvarez and Murray Bartlett and the show received mixed reviews during its initial run. Some critics praised its honest depiction of gay life, while others found it slow-paced and uneventful, reports The Independent.
To this day, Tovey feels saddened by the lack of community enthusiasm for Looking during its run. He tells The Independent that gay men would casually remark that the show was “boring” or, worse in his opinion, they’d say they never bothered to watch.
“They’d say, ‘You’re in ‘Looking!’… but I’ve not watched it, I’ve heard it’s boring,'” Tovey says. “They hadn’t even seen it! And it’s about you, in your city, filming outside your coffee shop, and you’re not even intrigued to watch it? It really, really frustrated me. It broke me, honestly.”
Right show, wrong time?
Tovey went on to suggest that if Looking had been released today, it would have been received much better, citing the success of recent LGBTQIA+ shows like Heartstopper and Glee.
“If that show came out now, it’d have a completely different response,” he says. “Look at Heartstopper or Glee. If we had those shows when I was growing up, I would have felt a bit better about myself.”
Despite the mixed response, Tovey, who played the character of Kevin on the show, remains proud of his work on Looking and hopes that the series will continue to find new audiences in the years to come.
