He’s a pro in complicated romantic roles. The question of whether Josh O’Connor is gay or in a relationship is brought up by viewers who watched the steamy tennis thriller Challengers.
Spoilers ahead for Challengers! If you watched just the trailer of the long-awaited movie about a love triange, you’ve seen that spicy scene where Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Faist), and Patrick (O’Connor) gather in a hotel room and share a three-way kiss. Then, Tashi sits back while the other two continue. The interesting thing is that the kiss wasn’t in the early version of the script. “It wasn’t,” filmmaker Luca Guadagnino confirmed to the New York Times.
Related: Zendaya’s Challengers After-Party Dress is Tied Together With A Tennis Ball
Speaking with Variety, Zendaya explained how it’s not your typical sports movie. “It’s much deeper,” she said. “Tennis is just a metaphor for a lot of bigger shit. For power. For codependency. They’re using tennis as their device to get these things out of their system. It’s the only way they know how to communicate.”
While the movie is super horny, the Challengers sex scene is not what you think. In fact, it’s the build-up of sexual tension that makes it so steamy. “We were asked about the sex scenes, and Z [Zendaya] was like, ‘there aren’t any’,” O’Connor told the press in Australia when the film opened on April 18, per Elle Australia. “It wasn’t a stupid question. It’s a reasonable question because it feels so on the edge of that at all times. And actually, the tennis is the sex scene. That’s their intimacy.”
O’Connor talked about how he related to his character a lot in the movie. “He is front-footed, he’s overly confident — all these qualities that I’ve always admired and always wanted that I’ve never quite been able to have. Just to play it and be in his shoes for a few months was bliss,” O’Connor told AP. “That’s what I’ll hold on to with Patrick. I really like Patrick. I know he’s problematic but I really like him. I find him hilarious and charming and he knows himself. And those are all qualities that I don’t necessarily have but I admire in him.”
Is Josh O’Connor gay?
Josh O’Connor has taken up plenty of gay roles but has spoken out about his sexuality. “I have been asked, a few times, should a straight actor play a gay part?” he told GQ. “And every time I have been honest and said… I don’t know.”
“I’d always be really open about it. Sexuality…is more complicated than we realize. Just as Grayson talks about masculinity not being this steel rod, it’s true of queerness, too; it’s fluid and elastic, but we often don’t really have the tools to articulate that in our culture.”
The actor has played several characters who identify in the LGBTQ+ community in shows and movies like Hide and Seek, Peaky Blinders, God’s Own Country, The Colour of His Hair, and Bonus Track.
Is Josh O’Connor in a relationship?
It’s not known whether or not Josh O’Connor is in a relationship. He’s been previously linked to marketing Accounting Director Margot Hauer-King (the older sister of Jonah Hauer-King) in 2019 and in 2021, they were reportedly living together in New York City. However, in 2023, he purchased a house in Gloucestershire and moved back to the UK so it’s unknown if they are still together.