Netflix’s ‘You’: James Scully Opened Up About Forty Quinn’s Sexuality
The second season of Netflix’s You introduced several new characters into the twisted story of Joe Goldberg. One of them was Forty Quinn (played by James Scully). Much of You is about relationships and fans got to see a little bit of Forty’s personal life.
For example, we see him date Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers). In addition, we never see him date or express any attraction to men, so it was easy for some viewers to get the impression that he was heterosexual. Scully has a different take on the character.
What James Scully realized about Forty Quinn ‘retroactively’
Scully has gone on record to say Forty is sexually fluid even though the series never makes that explicitly clear. According to Digital Spy, he admitted he came to this conclusion “retroactively.” Scully did not say what made him feel that way about Forty. He also said there was “love” between Forty and Joe during the scene where they got high together and Joe cried, but not love of the sexual kind.
He explained “[T]he relationship between Forty and Joe, [was] at that point..a little more than a friendship, obviously. I think it’s a different kind of [love]. It was two, at least partially heterosexual men being…intimate with each other in a way that wasn’t sexual or violent.”
Should Netflix’s ‘You’ have been more explicit about the character’s sexual orientation?
Scully didn’t have an issue with You’s refusal to directly address Forty’s sexuality. He told Them. “I think that sometimes it’s important for queer characters’ queerness to be at the center of the story. And then I think sometimes it’s okay for queer characters to exist as we all do as people and not constantly be addressing that. So I sort of enjoyed that it was not like intentionally ambiguous; it just was what it was.”
At the same time, Scully doesn’t like that there’s so much interest in the character’s sexual orientation. “In our culture, it feels like sexuality…need[s] to be…clearly and stamped. Why do you really need to know? Forty’s not gonna have sex with you — he’s a fictional character. There’s no real good end game to this conversation.”
Of course, this approach to representation can spark controversy. Some fans of the show appreciated You’s low-key approach to Forty’s sexuality. On the other hand, others wished the show had been more explicit about Forty’s sexual orientation. There will always be fans who dislike when the people behind television shows and other works of art say that characters are LGBTQ without directly representing this fact on screen.
There was apparently more to the character of Forty than meets the eye. Scully has been open about the character’s personal life. However, some fans wish You had been as open about Forty’s sexual orientation as Scully has.
