John Humphrys grills Rupert Everett on his sexuality, asks if he will ever do an interview where ‘being gay doesn’t come up’
PARK CITY, UT – JANUARY 23: Actors Ethan Hawke (L) and Rupert Everett attend Cinema Cafe With Ethan Hawke And Rupert Everett during the 2018 Sundance Film Festival at Filmmaker Lodge on January 23, 2018 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
John Humphrys has been called out on Twitter for grilling Rupert Everett about his sexuality during an interview on Monday morning.
The BBC Radio 4 presenter asked the actor a series of questions about being gay on the Today programme, asking the actor if he ever “regretted” coming out.
He then concluded the interview by asking Everett: “Do you think there will ever come a time when you can do an interview and being gay doesn’t even come up?”
Rupert Everett attends a screening of The Happy Prince during the BFI FLARE: LGBTQ+ Film Festival (Jeff Spicer/Getty)
Critics slammed the presenter for the bombardment of questions, stating that “the year is 2018.”
“Rupert Everett appears on @BBCr4today to discuss his new film. John Humphrys relentlessly grills Everett about being gay, and then ends the interview with ‘Do you think there will ever come a time when you can do an interview and being gay doesn’t even come up?’ The year is 2018,” wrote actor Nicholas Pegg.
“John Humphrys interviews Rupert Everett more or less in the manner of the naval commander from Brass Eye,” wrote Tom Gatti.
Everett told the Press Association that he has lost out on “three or four” big roles because he is gay.
“But there were three or four big films, when I was successful, that the director and the other actors wanted me to be in and that I was absolutely blocked from by a studio, just for the fact of being gay,” he told the news agency.
Everett says there is still a straight boys’ club in cinema (Getty)
“That does absolutely happen. But at the same time it has been the making of me as well.”
Everett said that a “straight boys’ club” still operates in cinema.
“It is a subtle thing, taking part in a boys’ club – a straight boys’ club – and if you are a woman in it you have to bend yourself towards that world and if you are a gay in it, you are a second-class citizen, really, and subjected, at a certain point, to a brick wall, in terms of getting on.”
Humphrys was criticised for suggesting trans women are ‘men who think they are women’ in 2017.
Of the planned overhaul to the Gender Recognition Act to remove the bureaucratic hurdles currently faced by trans people, Humphrys appeared to misgender trans people.
“In other words, if a man thinks he’s a woman, all he has to do is fill in a form and say so, he doesn’t need to convince anybody else,” he said.
A BBC spokesperson said: “Since this interview centred around Rupert Everett’s portrayal of, and long-standing interest in, Oscar Wilde, it was not inappropriate to draw parallels between the two men and their experiences of being gay at different points in history.”
