Russell Tovey Steps Into Power With New Role

Out British actor Russell Tovey opened up about the fact-based historical drama he stars in, the openly gay hero who spoke out for truth, and pushing back against our post-factual times.

As previously reported, Tovey is featured in the four-part miniseries "Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes." The "Looking" actor portrays Brian Paddick, who was the deputy assistant commissioner on the London police force in the summer of 2005, when a series of bombings and attempted bombings led to a manhunt with tragic consequences for the innocent de Menezes, who was gunned down by police while riding the subway. The police department pushed a narrative that de Menezes had been acting suspiciously – wearing a bulky coat despite the hot summer weather; jumping a subway turnstile – but security footage showed none of that to be true. Even so, the media ran with the fictitious, but official, version of events.

At the time, Paddick was Britain's highest-ranking openly gay police officer, and he pushed back against the lies being told about the tragedy. His insistence on the truth had consequences for his career in law enforcement. (Paddick is now a Member of Parliament.)

"Tovey met Paddick – someone he calls 'incredibly heroic and important' – at queer charity events, which the actor attended in his early 20s," Esquire reported.

"I remember seeing him in the press and understanding what he'd experienced with homophobia within the force, homophobia within the press, and he still stayed present and out and proud," Tovey said of the man who was a hero of his youth. "And for me at that age, that meant a lot."

That hero is now a friend – and Paddick had given his seal of approval to Tovey's portrayal, Esquire noted.

But it's not just a matter of a juicy role in which Tovey gets to play a real life, out and proud icon of integrity. As Rolling Stone noted, "the timing matters too.... It's a show that arrives at a time when we're in a 'terrifying' [as Tovey called it] post-truth era. It's important then, he says, to tell the truth during a period when social media giants like Facebook have abandoned fact checkers, in a move perceived to be bowing to the Trump administration."

Such stories have the power to help stem the rising tide of falsehoods and bias, and Tovey embraces "Suspect" as such. He also stars in the film "Plainclothes," Rolling Stone detailed, another based-on-true-events drama, this one set in 1990s New York City, in which he plays a character on the other end of biased cop conduct – in this case, Tovey portrays a man named Andrew who becomes romantically involved with a vice officer (Tom Blyth) sent to cruise men in public places and then arrest them.

"Gay men were being targeted when they were cruising bathrooms, and the police would trap them and ruin their lives," Tovey explained to Rolling Stone.

Tovey cited other current examples of dramas that underscore troubling social problems, such as the British miniseries "Adolescence" (streaming on Netflix), which depicts a 13-year-old boy's immersion into incel culture via social media, and the shock and questions that result when he brutally murders a female classmate.

While stories like these are inherently shocking, they are not gratuitous. Said Tovey: "We should be shocked, because that makes people sit up and go, 'This can't happen.'"

Added the actor: "The only way that we will progress as a society and for people to be held accountable for bad behavior is to shock people – to show you the reality of what it is."

That means reexamining historic wrongs and correcting lingering misapprehensions. But taking an honest look at history is a challenge in an era where the truths about current events take a distant second place to sensationalism.

"I think, as human beings, we want the truth if it's being written down in a newspaper or if it's spoken about on a news channel," Tovey told Rolling Stone. "It has to be reliable, because what are we supposed to understand about the world if we're constantly being gaslit?"

"Dramatizing these events and upholding honesty just really matters," Tovey declared. "What's happening in the States is fucking terrifying, but it makes me more determined to tell gay stories and to play gay characters. If people are having to be brave, they should be brave right now because they're going to be on the right side of history, and I think I've always really run towards that."