While Orphan Black's Jordan Gavaris plays a gay man on the hit BBC America show, his IRL sexuality has never really been a topic of discussion. Why not? Simply because no one asked. However, in a recent interview with Vulture, Gavaris spoke about his sexuality for the first time, with one simple sentence: "Oh, I'm gay."
"Nobody ever asks me," he continued. "I’ve never been asked. Like, the whole course of the series."
Which is crazy, if you think about it, since the show has just entered its fifth and final season. It's especially interesting because Gavaris' character, Felix, is proudly out and sexually active on the show.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
"I had this position when I started on the show that it shouldn’t matter," he added. "And I believe that. I hope that one day, the world gets to a place where you don’t need to politicize your sexuality any more than someone needs to politicize their race — that we can just act and we can exist in this Zeitgeist, telling stories about one another. And that no one’s afraid, maybe, to come out."
Orphan Black itself is already heralded as an extremely LGBTQ-positive show, featuring multiple main characters who are gay, and, at one point, a trans clone. While being open about his sexuality could, he admits, affect his career, it's for the right reasons.
"There’s been a lot of conversation in the industry about hiring openly gay actors for gay parts, and I think that’s really important," he explained. "But frankly, I’m not interested in doing any kind of work where I couldn’t bring myself in totality to the character. And if that would mean that I am ultimately not the right fit in terms of casting, then I probably shouldn’t play that part anyways."
Luckily, the part of Felix is perfect for Gavaris.