Culture

In "A Very English Scandal," Hugh Grant Brings a Subtle, Moving Queer Character to Life


It’s easy to see why the story would make for a best-selling book and, now, an award-nominated miniseries: The Thorpe trial was twisty and turny — and much like the Oscar Wilde trial before it, a key barometer of homophobia in Britain. Thorpe was a political powerhouse before the public learned about his relationship with Scott; afterward, he was effectively finished, described by the Washington Post as “a ruined man.”

But more compelling than A Very English Scandal’s plot is Grant himself. He portrays Thorpe as a narcissist, but to do so, he doesn’t simply turn up his already-ample charms; rather, the actor captures the insecurity and vulnerability at the heart of Thorpe’s unassailable self-belief. Emotions flicker on and off Grant’s face, faint but still detectable, and always it reverts back to the same wan politician’s smile. The pain of the closet, and the lengths to which Thorpe would go to stay inside of it, are evident in Grant’s eyes, even when he’s merrily tucking into a steak dinner.

There’s a devastating scene near the end of A Very English Scandal after Thorpe is acquitted, in which his barrister George Carman asks why he chose to be in a relationship with Scott, of all men. Thorpe, still not admitting to the affair, speaks elliptically about the violence he faced while hooking up with rougher men whose homophobia-induced self-loathing led them to lash out.

“If you do know those men, George,” Thorpe says, “then you know those nights, and you know how those nights can end.” Images of Thorpe being beaten up and mugged flash on the screen before he continues: “Given those men, maybe, I suppose one could imagine, that Norman Scott was the best.”

Grant delivers the line as if from a faraway place, biting his lip, before reestablishing his cheerful façade with a playful lift of the eyebrows. It is a jaw-dropping moment. No wonder Grant has been earning the finest reviews of his life for the role. (Vanity Fair’s Emily Yoshida called his performance “endlessly layered,” for one.) Nor is it a surprise that a closeted and morally-compromised politician has proved to be such a compelling LGBTQ+ character. Grant’s Thorpe is no model for the community, sure, but he is fascinating to watch — and he’s precisely what we need to see more of right now.

Years from now, the queer characters that will stick in our minds will likely prove to be the thorny ones, not the smoothly-polished stones. Queerness can be messy, and media that reflects that reality back to us will resonate more deeply than media that tries to make us too neat and self-contained. The Favourite, a darkly comic historical dramedy featuring Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone competing for the romantic attention of Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne, was a gift to every queer women who has suffered through dozens of trope-laden, formulaic lesbian romance movies. And Killing Eve’s bisexual assassin Villanelle will be GIFed into eternity, while so many other characters fade into the past.

Creators are finally figuring out that they can give us queer villains without passing an implicit or explicit moral judgment on their queerness. If Hitchcock had made A Very English Scandal fifty years ago, for example, it’s quite possible that Jeremy Thorpe’s interest in men would have been depicted as menacing in and of itself, à la Bruno in Strangers on a Train. Given that history, it’s refreshing to watch an actor like Grant play a closeted queer character who brute-forces his way through an attempted murder trial, while the series itself (written by Queer As Folk creator Russell T. Davies) condemns the homophobia of the day. Finally, Hollywood is allowing queer characters to be malevolent — sometimes, even murderous — without making it seem like their sexual orientation is the root of their immorality.

And if there’s any actor who’s benefited from that trend, it’s Grant. Back in 1987, before he became a rom-com A-lister, Grant actually did played a closeted man in James Ivory’s Maurice, an adaptation of an E.M. Forster novel set in WWI-era Britain about an English man smitten with a university classmate who later leaves him to marry a woman. A younger and less experienced Grant, who plays the classmate, isn’t as capable of portraying the pain of the closet as he is today. In all, it’s a movie that “may seem old hat to today’s moviegoers,” as them. has noted — precisely the kind of film that helps advance LGBTQ+ representation, even if it ultimately fails to be memorable.



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