Fra Fee talks to the City A.M. – The Magazine about LGBTQ representation this Pride month
Between Heartstopper, Love, Simon and Red, White & Royal Blue, there is finally a diverse range of LGBTQ entertainment on our screens. One topic in the spotlight this year is gay adoption, through the Luke Evans film Our Son and new BBC drama Lost Boys and Fairies, released for Pride Month, which follows the story of a gay male couple in their thirties trying to adopt. The role positions Northern Irish actor Fra Fee as one of the leading LGBTQ actors breaking through right now.
Comic book fans will already be familiar with Fra Fee, who played Kazi Kazimierczak, one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s few gay characters, in Hawkeye. The role helped put the man from Dungannon amongst the A-list. Fee also had the frightening task of following Eddie Redmayne in the role of Emcee in the Cabaret musical in London, one of the most prolific, critically acclaimed queer stories to have graced the London stage. And now he leads Lost Boys & Fairies opposite Sion Daniel Young.
“At secondary school there were zero positive representations of queer life,” he says. “You were taught homosexuality was something that was not good. Lost Boys was such a happy experience, playing a part that resonated so much really moved me. With future roles I’m just pursuing that feeling.”
You’ve been taught it’s an inherently shameful thing and it’s very, very, very deep. I think I’m doing okay but it’s an ongoing thing. It’s not as if society has completely changed to the stage where I can be completely free
Fra Fee on growing up LGBTQ in in Northern Ireland, where he attended a Catholic boarding school
In Lost Boys, Fee plays Andy, who’s dating drag performer Gabriel (Sion Daniel Young). It’s joyous and sentimental, and at times tragic, combining elements of magical realism with a political message. Gabriel performs in drag in a labyrinthine queer venue, a high-ceilinged space more like a church than a gay bar. There is a severe lack of LGBTQ community spaces in the UK, even in our capital city.
Sion Daniel Young and Fra Fee in Lost Boys & Fairies (Photo: Simon Ridgway/BBC/Duck Soup Films)
“We just kept wishing it was real,” says Fee. “I don’t think any of us have been to anything like it, whereas in the show everyone is welcomed into this celebratory, wonderful colourful space.” He says the show’s themes and style “feels like an adult version of Heartstopper, in that it focuses on this really gorgeous relationship that is perfectly ordinary. It’s extraordinary in its ordinariness.” Heartstopper, about teenagers Nick and Charlie who fall for one another, has been credited as reframing the way we tell LGBTQ stories in the mainstream. It has been celebrated as vital representation for the community and has pulled in giant audiences for Netflix.
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“I know young people feel confident to come out at school aged 12 or 13, and I suspect that’s partly because of what they’re seeing on their TVs,” says Fee, who attended a Catholic boarding school in Northern Ireland. “These shows are genuinely changing people’s lives, which is mind-blowing because it’s not something I’d ever imagined for myself at the time.”
Fee, who lives with his boyfriend Declan in an Oxfordshire village, says the culture of homophobia at school during Section 28 created issues he’s still working through as an adult. “You think you’re doing absolutely fine, but every now and then something catches you off guard in how you react to something,” he says. “You’ve been taught it’s an inherently shameful thing and it’s very, very, very deep. I think I’m doing okay but it’s an ongoing thing. It’s not as if society has completely changed to the stage where I can be completely free. That’s obviously not the case. Queer people are still being attacked, beaten up on buses.”
Fra in his defining role as the Emcee in Cabaret
It’s testament to his character that he’d “love” to go back to lead a workshop at his old school in County Armagh one day. Fee was introduced to acting by his dad who performs amateur dramatics productions at home in Ireland and speaks passionately about his dad’s craft. “They did The Ferryman recently,” says Fee, speaking like a proud parent about his dad’s stage success at home. But it was at university in Manchester, while studying music, that Fee began to fall in love with musicals, which he viewed as a way of escaping into another life.
“I’m a bit of a Sondheim freak,” he says. His dream stage role would be George from the Sondheim musical Sunday in the Park with George. An adaptation starring Jake Gylenhaal was heading for the West End in 2020 but was scuppered by the pandemic. Has he made his interest clear to casting agents? “To the universe!” he says through laughter. He’s got one of the most impressive stage CVs in London but over conversation and avocado toast in a small cafe in north London, you feel Fee is genuinely humble; you believe he is thankful for every role he gets. He still does “some” acting teaching, which he enjoys, despite his success.
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He has 25 theatre credits to his name in a career going back to 2009. Since the MCU called he’s been blessed with more work than he can take on. “Saying no is an important part of the process,” he’s learned. I suppose it makes it easier that he’s got a big boy agent these days who can say no for him? “I suppose so,” he says, looking down at the table. Patting himself on the back is clearly uncomfortable.
He’s keen I’m writing this article to coincide with Pride month, which coincides with Fee’s own also holding of Marvel to account over LGBTQ storylines: “I certainly think they could do a bit more work with the queer representation,” he says.
But it can’t all be agenda-setting work: as we part he’s off to get another tattoo (he twizzles round showing me the etches he already has) and afterwards, will return to the calm of the countryside and his “amazing” boxer dog. “There are so many class pubs,” he says. “It’s pretty chill!”
Lost Boys and Fairies starring Fra Fee is streaming on BBC iPlayer