Daniel Craig stars as Detective Benoit Blanc in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. In the Knives Out sequel, Black travels to Greece to crack a whodunit case involving a new cast of suspects. The story is quite compelling, but it seems to have been overshadowed by another revelation in the film: Detective Blanc is gay.
Director Rian Johnson confirmed during the London Film Festival that Daniel Craig’s character was queer, but audiences needed to see it to believe it. Blanc is gay, and his husband in the film is portrayed by none other than Hugh Grant.
The much-celebrated revelation has sparked questions about Craig’s sexuality.
Daniel Craig publicly identifies as straight and views LGBTQ+ sexualities as normal
Daniel Craig publicly identifies as straight. He’s only dated women and is currently married to actress Rachel Weisz.
Regardless, Craig views queer sexualities as normal. “That [gay] relationship reflects people in my life,” Daniel told The Sunday Times. “It’s normal. But we don’t want to make a song and dance out of it. It just feels right.”
Director Rian Johnson added: “It just made sense to Daniel and me [for Blanc to be queer]. We didn’t want to be coy or cute about it. We just wanted it to be a fact of the character.”
In 2010, Daniel and his long-time friend Bruce Bozzi were seen sharing an intimate moment outside a gay bar in Venice Beach, California. It sparked intense speculation that Daniel was a closeted gay. Craig and Bozzi discussed the rumors during an episode of Lunch with Bruce. Daniel said:
“We’re tactile, we love each other. We give each other hugs, it’s OK. We’re two fucking grown men. For me, it was one of those situations and the irony is, you know, we kind of got caught, I suppose, which was kind of weird because we were doing nothing fucking wrong.”
“What happened is we were having a nice night and I kind of was talking to you about my life when my life was changing and we got drunk and I was like, ‘Oh, let’s just go to a bar, come on, let’s fucking go out.”
Despite being straight, Craig doesn’t mind sharing intimate moments with men. Daniel told Stephen Colbert that he kissed all of his leading men. “The thing is, it just breaks the ice,” Craig said.
Craig revealed he visited gay bars to avoid aggressive hetero men
Daniel Craig said he started going to gay bars to avoid getting into fights with aggressive hetero men. Craig explained:
“As a kid, because it was like… ‘I don’t want to end up [being] in a punch-up.’ And I did. That would happen quite a lot. And it [a gay bar] would just be a good place to go.”
Daniel described gay bars as safe places to enjoy himself. Craig also met women at gay bars who’d been attracted by the calm nature of the establishments. He continued:
“Everybody was chill, everybody. You didn’t really have to sort of state your sexuality. It was okay. And it was a very safe place to be. And I could meet girls there, cause there are a lot of girls there for exactly the same reason I was there. It was kind of an ulterior motive.”
The debate on whether gay spaces should be reserved for queer people rages on the internet. Straight people like Craig opine that such areas make them feel safe. However, others say that gay clubs are used as an ‘aesthetic’ by people who don’t need them.