For LGBTQ actors, coming out can mean career suicide.
At least, that’s the fear.
Ben Aldridgehas committed a cardinal sin of the gay community.
Ben Aldridge, Jonathan Groff, and Kristen Cui star as a terrorized family in ‘Knock at the Cabin’.Universal Pictures
At the time of our interview in late January, it still hasn’t been rectified.
He has not seenM3GAN, the viral horror sensation starring Allison Williams.
“All the gays have turned out forM3GAN.”
Ben Aldridge.David-Simon Dayan
Well, all the gays except for him.
“I definitely will!”
the actor fromPennyworth,Spoiler Alert, andKnock at the Cabinquickly promises in a fit of laughter.
Jim Parsons and Ben Aldridge in ‘Spoiler Alert’.Giovanni Rufino/FOCUS FEATURES
“That film’s also about ‘love is love,’ right?”
Fueled bya TikTok-friendly dance, the movie hit a nerve with LGBTQ movie-goers.
(Just watchtheSaturday Night Livesketch.)
Ben Aldridge, Jonathan Groff, and Kristen Cui in ‘Knock at the Cabin’.Everett Collection
Aldridge now hopes they’ll love his own foray into horror.
After all,Knock at the Cabin, directed byM.
“That was a whole new kind of muscle.”
Aldridge never set out with the determination to play gay roles in mainstream studio films.
Through his success, he’s overcome a fear he once had early in his career.
“It just didn’t feel like something that was possible.”
Though, he admits it was “a calculated risk.”
Therefore, what comes back at you is also gonna be different.
I have really relished playing gay men.
It has given the work that I’m doing much more meaning.
I’m meeting myself in my work."
It premiered on ITV in the U.K. when he was 24.
“It wasn’t something that I was fiercely protecting,” he clarifies.
Yet he was craving something.
Aldridge points out he was the only gay person on the show.
It also happened to star Groff, Aldridge’s futureKnock at the Cabincostar.
“Lookingwas one of my favorite TV shows,” he exclaims.
“I remember thinking that it wasn’t very well supported.
They came under fire for not representing the entire [LGBTQ] community, of which we havethemost community.
It’s hard to tick all those boxes.”
Aldridge admits it sounds sad, but, while working onOur Girl, the friends onLookingfelt like his own.
“I was like, ‘I need some gay friends.’
I put that on and it really helped me.
I didn’t yet have my own gay community.
That taught me what I could potentially have in friendship.”
Aldridge feels “it’s been a very slow journey to Pride” for him.
It wasn’t that he was grappling with the decision.
He felt like he might have been hiding behind those romantic straight parts he racked up in his career.
“I wanted to be proud and authentic about who I was,” he says.
Others in the industry felt that change in Aldridge.
Aldridge had a Zoom meeting with Showalter andJim Parsons, the film’s co-lead and executive producer.
That was all it took.
“We knew each other a tiny bit socially.
“That’s a specific set of skills that an actor needs to have.
They have to inherently be able to follow something over a hundred scenes.
He has that.”
“All it said on the email that I got was Dave Bautista was in the film.
It feels like a real departure.'
He was like, ‘What are you saying?
… Dave isn’t playing Eric.
Are you mad?’
It really affected the way I was playing the scenes.
A little bit like, ‘Hey, daddy!'”
Bautista laughs when he hears this story.
Aldridge had been aware of Groff’s work for some time, even before he first watchedLooking.
He remembers auditioning for the actor’s part in a West End production ofSpring Awakening.
Producers then cherry-picked which actors from each set they wanted for the roles.
He still looks back on that experience with at leastsomefondness.
Listening to Groff in the original cast recording taught Aldridge how to sing the music.
Shyamalan cast the Andrew and Eric roles forKnock at the Cabinalmost simultaneously.
Groff’s Eric is much more buttoned-up and quite careful.
Andrew is always on high alert.
Aldridge was self-conscious about this element initially.
“I’d never thrown a punch,” he says.
The actor trained first in London and then in Philadelphia, the home of Rocky.
Once a certain physical scene was shot for the movie, Aldridge immediately dropped his high-intensity boxing routine.
But he agrees, “It was integral to the character.”
Aldridge could connect personally toKnock on the Cabinon multiple levels.
Flashbacks sprinkled throughout the film as vignettes show Andrew’s complicated relationship with his parents.
The story also grapples with the idea of religion.
“I grew up in a fiercely religious evangelical household,” Aldridge mentions.
“I’ve been on a real journey with that.
I don’t know what it is.
Is it healing or something?
Aldridge thinks back to his 25-year-old self when he first came out of the closet.
“I just didn’t think that was ever going to be a possibility.”
