Writing your own IP is a good way to get cast
Armitage says he will star in a series based on Geneva.
I still haven’t read or listened to it, but what I’ve heard from fans suggests that the character is mildly awful. Another wish of his, fulfilled, I guess. On the other hand, this character is supposed to have had a lot of him in it?
The project is not on the White Boar Films page (yet).
Me + Richard Armitage 
Servetus, I’ve been reading your blog for a while and love the way you write.
I discovered RA during the pandemic and like every one else fell down that rabbit hole.
The Daily Mail and Guardian article I think is very revealing of the true Armitage.
I always assumed RA to be bisexual (he just left out the fact that he was attracted to men – and I got that) as I simply wouldn’t let myself believe that he lied for so many years. The constant cribbing about being ‘totty’, his self doubt, his comments about his strong moral compass, the flirty ‘call me’ photograph, the constant preaching about kindness and his love of truth – all seem to be manipulation on his part.
He seems to have single mindedly sought to further his career – even if it meant playing on people’s emotions. A kind of bullying??
He probably is more like Daniel than he let on. Definitely not who he wanted us to think he was – oh well! My mistake for falling for it.
Disappointing.
P.S. You have mad writing skills. Hope you publish a book of your own someday.
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Wow, what a message to wake up to! Thank you!
I think it’s time for another “who is Richard” discussion. It seems to be sizzling under the surface, and if he’s going to be on TV screens again, there will be a lot more press. Through my crush, my position has been that he’s like most humans; he wants to do the right thing and does it when it’s convenient. (There is occasional evidence of more — his coworkers speak well of him, for instance — and occasional evidence of less.) His behavior w/r/t fundraising has annoyed me off and on for a long time, and any legacy fan (fans from before The Hobbit) has a right to be frustrated on that score. I definitely agree that he is manipulative (although more than the average actor on the make? hard to say). But the forked tongue attitude to sexuality is of a piece and it marks his whole career and it is galling.
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Listen to it first and then judge. I loved it.
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Not judging (I want him to get what he wants), but I can’t imagine I’ll listen to it. The longer I live, the less I enjoy audiobooks. I did buy the discs, though, to be in solidarity. I also bought a signed copy of the book, but it hasn’t appeared here yet. I should check on that.
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If it keeps him on the screen rather behind it recording audiobooks, writing them, producing, then I will be pleased.
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Definitely a good point, and one that I also struggle with. But yes to more acting and fewer audiobooks.
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At first I was interested in the DM article because I felt I was learning more about the “real” RA. Then I was brought down to Earth and reminded that the DM doesn’t have the greatest track record re: accuracy. Add that to RA’s history of half truths (or was info about gfs a function of a PR spin gone too far?) and I was left with an uneasy feeling that I really know nothing about the man whose career and life I have followed (more like doted on, tbh) for the last 2 yrs. (I can hear the legacy fans sighing now, only 2 yrs!) but those were 2 yrs of my life, given over in large part to watching/listening to every performance, reading every article, listening to every interview, hanging on every word. And now I am told (by another fan) that I cannot believe anything unless it comes out of his mouth directly (i.e., tweeted or said in a live interview, not via a quote in a print interview). I am left feeling confused and disillusioned. Based on the responses to the DM article from some of your other readers, this seems like a safe place to share my self-doubts (a trait I thought I had in common with RA, but which has increasingly felt like so much BS thanks to the ever-widening chasm between what he says and what he actually does). I am not no naive that I believe everything I read online/in the press without at least a hint of skepticism. But in light of this article and my fellow fans’ reactions to it I am left with the niggling feeling that I have had the proverbial wool pulled over my eyes. Is there nothing we can take at face value? I think I need a support group (only mildly joking here). Oh wait! That’s the role the fandom is supposed to fill, right?! So I’m wondering if I’m the only fan (except for Knitting Nana) who feels this way. I don’t always understand what, for me at least, is your somewhat esoteric writing style, Servetus, but I would welcome a Real RA Redux blog. TY.
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You’re right to say that the topic you outline would require a lot of attention (probably more than one blogpost).
I think a lot of things are true that may conflict with each other intermittently:
There’s also the observable pattern that 18 months is the usual extent of intense crush in the Armitage fandom, at least as far as I have seen. My own “hanging on every word” phase lasted about five years (from Strike Back until CyberSmile), and that was really long. Most people whose feelings extend beyond the intense phase find a way of adjusting to the things that bother them, and that way is unique to every fan.
I think there’s an additional potentially alienating effect that we tend to get a blast of new info about him during these press floods around new projects, so it’s not just that one is left thinking “he isn’t who I thought he is,” it’s that one has thought precisely while so many people around us are euphoric and ecstatic (in other words, the moment at which the problematic recognition occurs is the worst possible one to expect a lot of solidarity from fellow fans who are in a tizzy about all the new material).
Specifically on the sexuality issue(s) — this is something that was SO tabu to discuss in public for SO long that I think a lot of us who have persisted from those times in the fandom are struggling to formulate words beyond a sort of “as long as he’s happy” reaction that doesn’t completely encompass how we feel. I referred to that here:
A lot of fan drama, particularly after 2012, was focused precisely on this issue, and what many fans thought was more nuanced and diverse than some fans with particular convictions tried to make it be. Also, a lot of the evidence about Armitage’s sexuality (because it was excluded from discussion in the main venues — I think I referred to this in a previous answer) ended up in very shady / doubtful outlets. It was also clear that particular fans were being trolled by outsiders who just wanted, for their own amusement, to watch RA fans cycle into intense protective mode and outrage.
Anyway, you’re right that it deserves more discussion. Maybe I have the emotional energy for that now. We’ll see.
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Hello Servetus! Ive been a reader of your blog for some time however I have never really felt the need to comment as most of the time I prefer to watch the various going ons in the fandom at a distance as opposed to being an active participent. I was first introduced to RA when I was quite young through the Hobbit trilogy (myself and my family being quite the Tolkien geeks lol) and have been an avid follower of his work ever since (though my devotion has waned slightly in the last year or so). In those years I put in a lot of research in an effort to learn about the man himself through interviews, articles, performances etc until eventually today I came across his interview with the Daily Mail and tbh I find myself increasingly confused and somewhat disillusioned (amd judging by the comments of some other fans I am not the only one). Of course, like sassenachlou also stated, it is well worth noting that the Daily Mail is not the most reliable source and things can be taken out of context or spun in a different way very easily (especially in a print interview). However, I cannot help but feel slightly misled and somewhat manipulated, especially considering what RA has eluded to in the past (girlfriends, attraction to women etc…). It was based on his past comments (and more recent ones) that I guessed that he could possibly be bisexual/pansexual but still refrained from labelling him as such as he at the time hadn’t explicitly said what he identified and I feel very uncomfortable labelling someone something when they haven’t done so themselves (if that makes sense lol). I never thought of him as a liar (with all his talk of a strict moral compass and love of truth etc) and maybe he isn’t but I still cannot help but feel a slight unease. Nonetheless I feel comforted somewhat seeing that other people here share some of my feelings and that Im not going crazy lol! Sorry for the length of my comment (for my first one I dont half ramble on lol!) Thank you so much for doing what you do, please keep it up xxx
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Thanks for the comment and welcome.
“Back in the day,” i.e., before The Hobbit and RichLee, there was still a lot of speculation about his sexual orientation — it just mostly occurred out of sight. There were private discussions between fans, and I was aware of at least one private group that formed so that a small group of fans could put their heads together and get to “the truth about it.” Insofar as I experienced people who were uneasy about the possibility that he was not heterosexual, I encountered a number of positions. I mostly outline these to stress that you are really not alone in your unease.
“Homosexuality (or whatever non-hetero orientation) is wrong, and I can’t crush on someone who commits these acts.” This was thankfully the smallest group; maybe a handful of people I was aware of, and they were all gone by about 2015 or so. I almost never hear this position articulated anymore.
“It’s okay if he’s not heterosexual, and I’m still a fan, but we should preserve his privacy / it’s not an appropriate topic for conversation.” This view was apparent very much among chronologically older fans, who strongly felt that if we were talking about it in the open, it would be a career killer for him. Sometimes this position was interpreted as a mask for actual homophobia (#1) but I don’t think it was; I think these were two different ways of thinking about it. I definitely understood this group’s concerns, although ultimately I did not share then. I think there are a still a fair number of fans who feel this way hanging around. They’re not hostile to his sexual orientation; they just don’t want to talk about it. In many ways they are the inheritors of the fans at the beginning who prohibited discussion of his private life on the forums. But unfortunately, for some of the fans in this group, fan policing was the order of the day, and it was painful to watch and experience.
“It’s fine if he’s ________ (whatever sexual orientation), I take no offense, but that will kill my crush.” Those people tended to disappear once they found out, although not always without expressing a certain amount of anguish. I didn’t share this view, but again I understood it. There are types of men whom I just don’t find attractive (for whatever reason — like, I don’t like blond men, or sports fanatics, or whatever). I accept that this is a largely arbitrary position on my part and that individual tastes in a crush are not automatically a matter of moral or ethical concern. To the extent that they could be seen that way (e.g., people who are only attracted to crushes of one particular race) I tend to see them as a product of the phase of history we are living in. Later generations will see this differently. I don’t feel that everyone is obligated to feel sexual attraction to everyone else; it’s not an equity issue.
4, “I don’t care what his orientation is or who he has sex with, but the fact of his _______ [lying, untruthfulness] is going to be damaging or even destructive to my crush.” I appreciated the honesty of this stance not least because it really reflected a significant ethical conflict. In the end I personally thought that given professional concerns until he was 50 or so, it wasn’t likely in his artistic or professional interest to be “out” as not a straight man if that was the case. (I could say more about this but won’t because it probably merits its own post). The other reaction I had to this stance was that particularly early on, the reporters who encountered him in the mainstream entertainment press were clearly invested in maintaining the impression that he was straight. I think this is part of what sassenachlou was touching on — the fact that it was so hard to cut through what the press was saying in some cases (something I noticed after I was well into my crush is that there has been a sort of code for many decades about how the intertainment press describes the “missing” love lives of non-straight male actors). We could add that maybe there is a subset of people in this group who felt “some kind of way” about the fact that they bought for so long — and even got involved in intense arguments — the possibility that he was straight. If that’s the case, I can see how him saying he came out to people who knew him when he was 19 has to burn. He was out in some sense for fifteen years before his career took off, and yet many fans still believed he was straight.
As to the question of lying, I think that is complex, and it’s also something I’d happily write more about. A wise friend of mine (who thought he was gay from the get-go) said to me once that when he said in early interviews he wanted to settle down with a wife and family “someday,” that he very possibly did have a segment of fantasy life that involved those things. Given his behaviors when we saw him interacting with children, there was little doubt that he acted like he likes kids, and so it was plausible he did want to be a father. We saw him in all these straight roles where he convincingly portrayed heterosexual attraction, and thus was probably required at least in his own mind to cultivate some kind of heterosexual fantasy to perform the roles. We all want things on different levels, and we all know that some things we want are not compatible with other things.
Interesting detour, perhaps: a lot of us thought that Richard Armitage was the actor Charlie Condou referred to here as having spoken about his girlfriend on the radio:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/29/gay-actors-worry-coming-out
I have one more comment on this but I’ll save it for a separate post.
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Hello. I must admit I hesitated before deciding to read the DM article. I did it because I knew I would read the reactions of fellow (long time) fans (I”ve been a RA -married-girlfan since “John Porta” ) which would “help” if need be to feel not alone in possible uneasiness or whatever feeling I’d experience (I know you don’t know me but no flattery here I mean it). Well…first of all, thanks for your posts and Servetus for your thorough analysis. These somehow 4 categories of reactions are relevant, though I admit in oscillate between the 4th and the 2nd sometimes, just because I’m conscious any confirmation of RA’s non-heterosexuality still “stings” a bit (tiny hole) in my heart, it’s not a judgment or that I don’t like him anymore of course, I still do, but I suppose it’s just a “normal” reaction of straight woman who’d rather her long time crush to be straight too, nothing unnatural or critical there I suppose.
As for Audiobooks, I bought them I confess, for his baritone soothing voice… and…because it allowed me to hear the Tattooist of Auschwitz” whitch I could not have been able to read without bursting into tears if it were not in an audiobook I must say. But, yes, like you, I like RA more in movies-miniseries, and theatre.
Secondly, I’d like to give my own feelings in reaction to your posts, in witch I see too questions to be answered eventually :
1) why did RA hide the truth (or “lie” if you prefer) about his being gay ?
-in the first place, this raises one question in me : what would have I done myself ? is it that easy to talk about it and make it “public” (even if it’s a private matter in the fisrt place) particularly when you need to earn a living and that it could shatter a few of your professional plans etc ? TBH I’m not sure what I would have done walking in his shoes… (sorry I coul not resist; it’s one of my favorite DM-this time Depeche Mode not Daily Mail- songs) ;
-maybe RA did ot feel it what “lies” but just secrecy and then he got taken in the wave of the whirlpool of acting business with its constraints and the longer you wait to telle “the truth”, the harder it becomes to telle it, I guess ;
– I still believe that RA is a softy, kind man so I still think he kept his “secret” not only to “protect” his career (see lower) (maybe his agents decided it with/for him too ?) but to protect his next of kin (his mother in the first place but not only for sure) who kew about it since he was 19 but who could be exposed to bad or silly reactions even nowadays (“mensonges pieux” like we call them in French) and…maybe even to protect those who had helped him keep his secret (Annabel Capper for instance ?) so that they were not seen as “liars” too or “accomplices” in his disguising the truth ;
-oh, silly me, but it crosed my mind so I dare write it, maybe it was a way to “protect” his female fanbase from a kind of hurtful disillusion (well I guess it can be just a tiny reasons among all the others I’m not that naive lol).
2) why does he open about it now and (much) not earlier ?
-RA is clever and wanted to preserve his career ; I’m an idealist somehow but “cartesienne” nevertheless so I believe, like most of you, that the main reason why he “opens” about it now is certainly that, besides the present context that makes it easier to “assume” than decades ago, RA can “afford” to talk about it without taking too many risks about his career developpment ;
– maybe I’m wrong but I dare think his main reason may be…love…for his long time (5 years now) partner. Thinking of it it must be hard to be part of RA life, quoted as a “good relationship” -this time, the first time maybe ?- and to be referred too as “the person I live wtih” or “given the nature of my relationship”. So, maybe Richard talks abourt it now just because he “need” to, after so long hiding this personal secret, and out of gratefulness for the happiness that his partner in life brought him (just a way to say “I’m no longer ashamed of talking about us”).
I don’t whish to act “protectively” here, I hope you get it, RA is a grown man and does not need this at all, I’m just giving my personal pow, that’s all. I tried in my own way to “process”, or “understand” the possible reasons for these “lies”, disguised or “half truths” as they were called. RA is just another example of how complex a human being is/can be.
Take care, all of you -and RA too of course.
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re: protecting us from a hurtful delusion — that had not occurred to me, but on the whole I tend to doubt it.
re: partner — I suppose it could be reassuring to a male partner that the on-screen sex with a woman did not affect Armitage’s main romantic relationship.
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