Sam Asghari has stripped down for a new PrEP campaign, and somewhere between the towel, the sauna and the dripping-wet shots of him caressing RuPaul’s Drag Race Pit Crew member Bruno Alcantara, the internet has landed on one question. Is he gay, or just the most enthusiastic ally on the market?
The 31-year-old Iranian-American model and ex-husband of Britney Spears is fronting a new campaign for MISTR, the largest online provider of PrEP and HIV care in the United States. The shoot dropped this week and has been everywhere since.
What’s actually in the campaign?
There’s a pair of bright-blue swimming briefs, a MISTR baseball cap, a stethoscope and a generous stretch of abs. There’s a sauna scene where Asghari, wrapped in a single MISTR towel, is surrounded by similarly under-dressed men, including Alcantara. The two glide their hands across each other’s slick stomachs while the camera lingers in a way Playgirl would describe as economical.
So is Sam Asghari secretly gay?
The short answer is no, not according to anything Asghari has ever said. The longer answer is that he has been a vocal LGBTQIA+ ally for years, and this campaign is a continuation of that, not a debut.
“It takes a lot of balls to do a campaign like that, literally,” Asghari said of the MISTR shoot. “I think I need [the LGBTQIA+] community more than this community needs me. If you want to ally, you can’t do it quietly.”
He has form. Earlier this year, Asghari publicly backed Freedom Of The Fly, a short film about a gay Muslim man trying to reconcile his faith and family with his sexuality. The project draws on the persecution of queer people in countries including Iran, where Asghari was born.
“Gay men are being executed to this day in different countries and different cultures,” he said in a promo for the film. “It is vital to be a voice for those who are struggling with this situation and amplify their stories.”
Why this campaign actually matters
MISTR, owned by The Abbey founder Tristan Schukraft, recently passed 500,000 patients across the US, and PrEP uptake among at-risk populations remains uneven. A famous straight-identified man in a towel talking about HIV prevention is not a subtle play, and that’s precisely the point. The campaign reaches people who would scroll past a standard public health ad without blinking.
Asghari has also said part of masculinity is being comfortable with your sexuality. At DNA, we think a confident straight man stripping off to push HIV awareness in the same week as IDAHOBIT lands better than most allyship of the year so far. The towel helps.
