Daniel Craig’s Knives Out character ‘obviously’ gay
Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc is queer in Knives Out, the film’s writer and director Rian Johnson has confirmed.
Benoit Blanc, the protagonist detective of the Knives Out franchise played by Daniel Craig, is officially queer, according to writer-director Rian Johnson. Johnson confirmed the character was gay at a press conference for the sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery at the London Film Festival, Entertainment Weekly reported.
“Yes, he obviously is,” Johnson said when asked if Benoit is queer, as implied by a brief scene in Glass Onion in which he is shown to live with another man.
The casting of Blanc’s lover is enviable, with Johnson saying of the actor in question, “There’s nobody in the world I can imagine in bringing me more joy for Benoit Blanc to be with.”
Daniel Craig added, “No spoilers [but] who wouldn’t want to live with that person?”
EW confirmed the sexuality of Blanc directly through reps for Netflix and Johnson.
Craig debuted as Benoit in the original Knives Out, which took $311 million at the worldwide box office and earned Johnson an Oscar nomination for original screenplay. Netflix picked up the rights to two sequels, the first of which stars Craig opposite queer actor-singer Janelle Monáe.
Craig, 54, is married to Rachel Weisz with whom he has a child, but he has previously discussed his appreciation of sexual fluidity and especially gay bars as welcoming spaces.
In an interview with Bruce Bozzi on SiriusXM’s Lunch with Bruce podcast, Craig explained he always preferred gay bars, telling Bozzi, they “would just be a good place to go. Everybody was chill, everybody. You didn’t really have to sort of state your sexuality. It was OK. 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.”
Craig said he gravitated towards gay spaces, “Because the aggressive d**k swinging in hetero bars, I just got very sick of it as a kid because it’s like, I don’t want to end up being in a punch-up. And I did. That would happen quite a lot.”
Bozzi is gay and one of Craig’s longterm friends and in 2010 the two were photographed by paparazzi leaving Roosterfish, a gay bar in Venice Beach, CA.
“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 f**king go out.’”
As the two men left the bar they hugged, some say they kissed, and The National Enquirer ran with the headline “007 hunk Daniel Craig shared a steamy kiss with a smoking hot guy in the parking lot of a gay bar – leading patrons to wonder if the action star is bisexual!”
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery opens in theaters on Nov. 23 for one week before streaming on Netflix starting Dec. 23.
