Baby Reindeer star Jessica Gunning has come out publicly and shared the moment she realised she was "a big, old gay".
Marking Pride month, the British actress, who rose to fame playing Martha on the Netflix series, shared her personal coming out story and admitted that she initially didn't think she “could be” gay.
Gunning described how liberating it now feels to live as her authentic self. She came out to her private circle some 19 months ago.Appearing on the podcast, Reign with Josh Smith, the 38-year-old shared: “I came out in November 2022. And that was a mega, mega thing for me.
“I am surrounded by gays, like all my friends are gay, so it wasn’t that I was repressing anything, it was just that I didn’t think that I could be.
“I still can’t articulate it in the best way. But I realised I was a big, old gay. I was like, ‘That’s what it’s been, that’s what it is’. And that was like a massive moment where everything kind of clicked and I made sense of myself then.”
The Netflix star added that she felt “like an alien” before she came out, something she attributed at first to her being a “bigger woman”.
“Because for so long I'd thought, ‘I know I'm a bigger woman’, and I thought that maybe it was to do with my size that I felt a bit like almost alien or like I was tagging along,” she continued.
“But as soon as I realised, I was like ‘No, it's that’, and that was like the most liberating thing.”
However, she explained there were signs that she could be part of the LGBTQ+ community, referencing her role in the 2019 stage production of When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, which saw her character kissing Cate Blanchett on stage.
She also starred in the 2014 film Pride, which depicted the true story of LGBTQ+ activists who joined the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners campaign.
Now, reflecting on that time, Gunning said: “I should have even known when I did Pride (a historical comedy drama based on a true story about a group of gay activists) because I would cry all the time. I found it so emotional I should have really known then.
“And then I did a play with Cate Blanchett where I got to kiss her every night on stage. Again, I should have known then. All these signs from pre-Reindeer staring me in the face.
“It's been amazing, and very freeing and very grounding. I feel like really peaceful actually.”
She added: “Naively I always used to think it would be just like a sexual thing. It's not that in any way, you're going 'this is who I am'. And it's actually really emotional. Some of my straight friends have actually said they envy people being able to come out because it's like a celebration of who you are.
“I think we're coming into a time when we won't ever need to really come out, but when you do it is so exposing, but it's also really lovely because you're going, ‘this is my soul a bit’, you're going, ‘This is who I am’.
“And you're getting to have all those amazing chats with your loved ones. It's really special. And loads of my friends have shared that sometimes it wasn't really that easy and that's emotional too. Everyone's been amazing, so supportive.”
Gunning has received universal critical acclaim for her performance as Martha in Netflix’s series Baby Reindeer.
One of the streamer’s most-watched titles, the series sees comedian Richard Gadd dramatise his harrowing true experience of being stalked by a middle-aged woman named Martha.
