Jun 4
'Baby Reindeer' Star Says She Should Have Known She was Queer When Kissing Cate Blanchett Onstage
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.
Out "Baby Reindeer" star Jessica Gunning opened up about how it took her three-and-a-half decades to come out – and how she "should have known" when she was kissing Cate Blanchett onstage.
The 38-year-old actor plays Martha in the series, a stalker who obsesses over Richard Gadd's character, Donny, and makes constant sexual overtures to him. The series is based on Gadd's own experiences.
Gunning did not always describe herself as "a big old gay" as she did in recent comments to the Reign podcast, UK newspaper the Daily Mail relayed, but that was only because she simply wasn't aware of who she was.
Gunning explained that when it finally dawned on her, "I kind of was 'Oh, that's what this has been, it's like a little secret I guess I've been keeping from myself even.' And not in a kind of hating way. I never felt I was repressing anything in a bad way, or that any reaction would be bad."
However, the "Doctor Who" actor added, "In hindsight, I used to go downstairs and watch 'The L Word,' that's a bit of a giveaway. So some of those things I should have really put two and two together. I took my time."
Another thing that should have clued her in, the Mail noted, was "when she was kissing actress Cate Blanchett on stage every night during a National Theatre production called 'When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other.'"
"Again, I should have known then," the "White Heat" star said. "All these signs from pre-'Reindeer' staring me in the face."
"Jessica, who has never been romantically linked to anyone, now describes coming out as 'liberating,'" the Mail relayed of the actor's emergence from the closet just over a year-and-a-half ago.
"I came out in November 2022," Gunning said on the podcast. It "was a mega, mega thing for me because" she wasn't aware of it herself for a long time, she said.
Gunning explained, "I am surrounded by gays, like all my friends are gay, so it wasn't that I was repressing anything, it was just that I didn't think that I could be [queer]."
"But I realized I was a big, old gay," the actor said, recalling her "Aha!" moment. "And that was like a massive moment where everything kind of clicked and I made sense of myself then."
Moreover, Gunning said coming out "was like the most liberating thing."
Check out Gunning's turn as Martha the stalker in the "Baby Reindeer" trailer, below.
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
