Actor Ncuti Gatwa comes out as queer

Barbie and Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa appears to have come out as queer.

In a new profile in Elle UK, the 30-year-old Rwandan-Scottish actor discussed how playing a gay teen in Netflix’s Sex Education “undid a lot of the [internalized] hate I had.”

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The high-profile sci-fi role follows her sell-out Broadway run in the musical “Chicago.”

“I’ve experienced racism my whole life, and while I always believed in myself, always knew [racists] were stupid and uneducated, I guess it did misinform my view of how the world works,” he explained. “It makes you think everyone has that opinion and you’ll constantly have to fight through life – then you learn that you don’t: you can find a tribe, you can find your people.”

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Gatwa, who is set to play the latest incarnation of the Doctor in the upcoming season of Doctor Who, went on to describe a transformative experience he had at a U.K. Pride celebration.

“I remember being at Manchester Pride, going through the streets with all my boys, shaking my cha-chas, living it up, when I saw this woman who looked exactly like my auntie. She wasn’t – but I knew she was Rwandan,” he recalled.

“I had never met another queer Rwandan person before,” he continued. “I thought I was the only one in the world.”

As Elle notes, Gatwa has never publicly disclosed his sexuality before. As recently as July, he discussed fending off speculation about his sexuality after his star-making turn in Sex Education.

“You have to fight for your right to privacy after that, but you also do feel like you owe people something,” he told British Vogue. “In setting my boundaries, I knew I wanted to separate the private and public, and that I never wanted my personal life to overshadow my work. I also believe that everyone is on their own journey, and it’s important that no one feels an obligation to others in relation to what’s happening to them internally.”

In the new Elle profile, Gatwa also mentioned being distracted by one of his very handsome co-stars in director Greta Gerwig’s history-making blockbuster Barbie. “There was a time when I was talking to Greta and I turned around and Ryan Gosling was looking at me,” he recalled, “and his eyes were so blue that I just… fell over. I just drowned in his eyes.”