How can straight actors be more authentic when playing gay characters?

[Jlewis]

Unless I see what is happening below the waist line (and not just somebody's bottom exposed), I will always assume that clever editing is involved. No doubt the infamous scene was shot like an Olive Garden commercial.

 

 

[TopBilled]

There were a few recent developments in the storyline about Aaron & Robert on Emmerdale. Aaron is still behind bars, appealing his sentence. But he's been doing drugs in prison to get through it. When Robert found out about this, he became upset and they had a very strained conversation in the prison visiting room.

 

Though they were recently wed, Robert now feels as if he and Aaron are finished. So he goes home and trashes a room, then gets drunk. And one of the couple's female friends comes over. Apparently, she had a slight history with Robert before he got with Aaron and realized he was gay.

 

The episode cuts to other plots, then at the end, the writers come back to Robert and the girl. And he's really drunk and still angry at Aaron, and feeling aroused. He tells the girl he and Aaron are done, and he starts to come on to her. She says she wants no part of this and gets up to leave. But he tells her he knows she wants him. And of course, he ends up having sex with her, which in the next episode he decides has been a mistake.

 

When I started this thread, I felt as if the actors in the storyline were not playing it authentically gay. But now if the writers are making Robert actively bisexual where he can go back and forth, it sort of changes things. The seduction scene with him and the girl was very hot, and it felt like the writers were clearly defining that this character will take sex any way he can, especially when he needs comfort. So if we're dealing with that sort of character, the orientation is almost incidental, because he cannot be defined by either. 

 

It was one of the rawest moments I've seen on a soap. And since the actor who plays Robert is straight in real life, it felt like he got off on making Robert seem straight for a few minutes. So there are all sorts of dimensions in this story, though I wonder if people in the viewing audience relate and if it is authentic for them.