Sir Ian McKellen On Charli XCX: ‘I Can’t Get Enough Of Him’
Image: Windsor & Eton Pride/Facebook
Sir Ian McKellen is officially brat, with the gay icon confirming at a Pride parade he does indeed listen to Charli XCX.
Speaking to TikTok creator @liamsventures at the first ever Windsor & Eton Pride Festival, McKellen was asked if he liked Charli XCX, and responded with “Oh, I can’t get enough of him.”
When the interviewer and their friends burst out laughing, Sir Ian hurriedly corrected himself, saying “Her? Them? Them.”
@liamsventures Sir Ian McKellen confirms he’s a @Charli XCX fan 🎉✨ – Oh and agrees that @Troye Sivan is charming 🤭 @WindsorEtonPride #windsorandetonpride #streetinterview #gay #lgbtq #fyp ♬ original sound – Liam <3
He was also asked what he thought of Charli’s friend and collaborator, Australia’s very own Troye Sivan.
“Well, Troye and I worked together when I was on tour in Australia,” Sir Ian said, referencing a 2010 touring production of Waiting for Godot.
“I remember Troye very well… Charming.”
In an interview with GQ Germany two years ago, Sivan said he had actually considered coming out to McKellen.
“I hadn’t come out to my parents at the time, but then I thought about telling Ian McKellen. Somehow I had the feeling he noticed,” he said.
Sir Ian reminds attendees not to take Pride “for granted”
The 86-year-old giant of stage and screen was attending Windsor & Eton Pride for the premiere of Dragged Through Time, the directorial debut of 14-year-old Jacob Franklin.
McKellen took a role in the youth-produced film after hearing about it through connections from the Director of Drama at Eton College, Scott Handy.
“We weren’t really expecting a reply,” Franklin told PinkNews. “But then he texts us back and says, in his words, not mine, that he’s ‘really inspired by this and would love to come and do this’. And I’m like, yes, absolutely!”
McKellen said that the film was the “one thing that would get me back to Windsor”.
“I often look back to myself at his age and regret I wasn’t close enough to my parents to talk to them about what I knew about myself,” the acting legend said in a behind-the-scenes video posted to Facebook.
“I never told either of my parents that their only son was gay. The idea that at 14 I could have plucked up the courage to have a conversation with them about something so personal… to see [Jacob] in this situation makes me think perhaps I could have done this if I had been a bit braver or if the world had been a bit different.”
Speaking to the crowd assembled for Pride on the weekend, Franklin said working on the project had been an amazing opportunity.
“This film is all about community and we’ve really pulled the whole community together to make this film.”
Sir Ian also took to the stage to deliver a quick message, and shared a memory from his very first Pride as a 49-year-old.
“I think I was crying all the time, I couldn’t believe it. And the importance of Pride in those days was simply to be there, as a witness, that there were gay people in the world and we existed,” he said.
“Just remember, you’re lucky. We can’t take it for granted… We’re here, we’re proud, we’re not going away.”
