In a recent interview with Variety, Charlie Carver, who is promoting the Netflix movie The Boys in the Band, claims a gay man he had worked with previously criticized him three separate times for being too obviously gay when he was at industry events.
He recalls being slapped at an Emmy party by the man which was a catalyst for Carver coming out a few months later.
“I was told that I needed to ‘get it under control' around people in the business,” Carver told Variety of how the incident began.
Later that evening, when Carver asked his colleague what he meant by the statement, the man slapped him.
“It wasn’t playful but intentional, pointed and meant to be instructive. A slap,” Carver said. “I told him that if he ever touched me again, I would name him.”
“That was the moment when I said to myself, ‘I can’t do this. I cannot police myself in that way,'” he said.
Carver came out a few months later, in January of 2016, on Instagram.
Carver is currently starring as “Cowboy,” a hustler and a birthday present for Zachary Quinto’s birthday boy Harold in The Boys in the Band Netflix film, a role in which he also played on Broadway.