Olivia Colman, the Oscar-winning British actress, has said she has an affinity for projects like Heartstopper because she has “always felt sort of non-binary.”
Colman said she has been honored to be welcomed by the queer community, and often feels like she has “a foot in various camps,” describing herself to her husband as a “gay man.”
The actress made the comments in an interview with Them, during which she was promoting her movie Jimpa, which tells the story of a mother taking her non-binary teenager to visit her gay grandfather in Amsterdam. Directed by Sophie Hyde, it co-stars John Lithgow and Aud Mason-Hyde.
Colman said: “Throughout my whole life, I’ve had arguments with people where I’ve always felt sort of nonbinary. Don’t make that a big sort of title! But I’ve never felt massively feminine in my being female. I’ve always described myself to my husband as a gay man. And he goes, ‘Yeah, I get that.’
“So I do feel at home and at ease. I feel like I have a foot in various camps. I know many people who do. I don’t really spend an awful lot of time with people who are very staunchly heterosexual…. The men I know and love are very in touch with all sides of themselves.”
On her attraction to queer stories, she added: “I think it’s a community that I love being welcomed into. I find the most loving and the most beautiful stories are from that community. And I feel really honored to be welcomed.”
Colman’s comments came as Mason-Hyde, who came to see Lithgow as “in some capacity a mentor” during Jimpa, said that the actor’s casting as Albus Dumbledore in the HBO Harry Potter series “feels vaguely hurtful” because of its links to trans rights critic J.K. Rowling.
“He is such an incredibly talented actor, but also such a beautiful human to make work with, and that was my experience with John,” Mason-Hyde told OUT. “I never felt invalidated or questioned or doubted in my identity or in my transness by him. I consistently felt that he was a very loving and a very guiding co-star.”
Mason-Hyde added: “And so there’s an element of this that feels vaguely hurtful. But also I think that he’s making this decision after we had made the film and after we had premiered the film, can’t take away from what we had and the time that we spent together and the beautiful work that he does in this movie and actually how incredibly authentically he played the role.”