Russell Tovey: Lovely Sexy Russell Thought For The Day

“You don’t want to say it’s a play about a gay footballer because Jason may be gay but he doesn’t identify himself as such,” says Tovey of his closeted character. “So it’s a play about how he’s betrayed friendship and signed a pact with the devil for his career. He’s not sad because he’s gay. He’s fucked up, and it’s his choice.”

For Tovey the theme is very current, “because now Tom Daley has come out, a sportsman at the top of his game. And yet there are no footballers who have come out, and the ones who do end up as tragedy stories. Robbie Rogers left the game, Justin Fashanu killed himself. There’s a rumour that a major sporting brand has had a six-figure sponsorship deal on the table for the past five years for the first Premiership footballer to come out and no one’s taken it.” *

Sexuality threatens the camaraderie between sportsman, he assumes. “It’s easier for Tom Daley because he’s a solo diver. What if you’re part of the rugby club on tour — touching each other’s dicks, they do very homoerotic acts, all fine because they’re straight — then they suddenly find out someone is gay? It becomes ‘Hang on a bit, we shouldn’t be doing this, you might be enjoying it’.”

The ever-bummable Russell Tovey, in the Evening Standard.

She's talking about some new play she's in, The Pass, about - timingly - gays and the soccerball. 

It is at the Royal Court in that London.

* This is absolute bollocks, Russell. That's why it is a rumour.

PS This was wonderfully warped by Queerty into; Russell Tovey Reveals Conversation He Had With Tom Daley About Coming Out. The article says they have never spoken about it.