Baby Reindeer star Jessica Gunning has opened up about her own coming out.
The British actor was previously known for her performances in Pride, The Outlaws and Back before landing her breakthrough role in Baby Reindeer, which proved to be a huge hit on Netflix earlier this year.
During a new interview on the podcast Reign With Josh Smith, Jessica shared that she came out as gay at the age of 36, which she described as a “mega mega thing”.
“I’m surrounded by gays, all my friends are gay and so it wasn’t that I was repressing anything. It was just that I didn’t think I could be, and I still can’t articulate it in the best way,” she explained.
“But yeah, I realised I was a big old gay, and I was like, ‘that’s what it’s been. That’s what it is’. That was a massive moment where everything clicked and I made sense for myself then because for so long, I’d thought, and I’m a bigger woman, and I thought maybe it was to do with my size, that I felt a little bit almost alien, or I was tagging along. But as soon as I realised, I was like, ‘no, it’s that.’ That was the most liberating thing.”
Comparing her own situation to that of the main character in her hit show, Jessica continued: “There’s a really emotional thing actually in Baby Reindeer where Donny talks about sleeping for the first time at his parents’ house, and I told my family [at] Christmas [in 2022], and I slept for 10 hours that night.
“It’s been a little secret, I guess I’ve been keeping from myself even. And not in a kind of hating way. I never felt I was repressing anything in a bad way or that any reaction would be bad. I just kind of was like, I didn’t think I could be.”
“I mean, in hindsight, I used to go downstairs and watch The L Word. So probably that would’ve been a bit of a giveaway,” she joked. “I should have even known when I did Pride, I would cry all the time. 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, should have known then. All these signs from the universe! It took me 36 years, but I did it.”
Jessica went on to say that she found her coming out process to be “very freeing and very grounding”.
“I feel really peaceful actually,” she said. “Naively, I always used to think it would be just weirdly a sexual thing – like that if you’re telling people it’s like you are saying, ‘I like boobs,’ and it’s not that in any way. You are 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 feels like a celebration of who you are. And I think we’re coming into a time where we won’t ever need to really come out again. But when you do, it is so exposing. But it’s also really lovely going, ‘this is my soul’.
“Not to sound too cheesy, but you are going, ‘this is who I am.’ And you’re getting to have those amazing chats with all your loved ones. It’s really special. And also loads of my friends have shared that sometimes it wasn’t that easy. That’s really emotional too.”
Following the success of Baby Reindeer, Jessica can currently be seen in the new series of The Outlaws, which began streaming on BBC iPlayer last week.
Since her rise to global stardom thanks to the Netflix show, she’s repeatedly spoken about the impact of the show’s success, as well as the ongoing debate about whether enough was done by Netflix to protect real-life people who identified the fictionalised events in Baby Reindeer.
Jessica and her Baby Reindeer co-star Richard Gadd were also stand-outs on the red carpet of the TV Baftas last month.