Harry Styles’ Gay Kiss Nominated For MTV Award, The Last Of Us Fans Upset
Image: David Dawson and Harry Styles in 'My Policeman'
Harry Styles’ fans are cheering after the pop singer’s gay kiss in My Policeman was nominated for the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards in the Best Kiss category. However, the award nominations caused a major upset after two powerful queer moments in The Last of Us were shut out from the list.
Styles, who has battled accusations of queer-baiting, played a bisexual cop in the British drama My Policeman, produced by Amazon Prime. Set in 1950s England, Styles plays Tom, a policeman, in a love triangle with school teacher Marion (Emma Corrin) and Patrick (David Dawson), a museum curator.
Styles told Rolling Stone last year that Michael Grandage wanted to portray the gay sex between Tom and Patrick in a tender way.
“So much of gay sex in film is two guys going at it, and it kind of removes the tenderness from it. There will be, I would imagine, some people who watch it who were very much alive during this time when it was illegal to be gay, and [Michael] wanted to show that it’s tender and loving and sensitive.”
Harry Styles On Filming Gay Sex Scenes
On The Howard Stern Show, Styles discussed filming the gay sex scenes and his first-ever screen kiss.
“It does feel vulnerable. I’d never kissed anyone on camera before and it felt like giving a part of myself away in some ways, I was naked in My Policeman. There’s no peen in the final cut. There’s bum bum… I don’t think the peen was intended to be involved,” Styles revealed.
Styles’ gay kiss will go up against kisses in The Last Of Us (Anna Torv and Philip Prajoux), Daisy Jones & The Six (Riley Keough and Sam Claflin), Outer Banks (Madison Bailey and Rudy Pankow) and the gay kiss in Only Murders In The Building (Selena Gomez and Cara Delevingne).
Queer Romance In ‘The Last Of Us’
Guess which of these moments from The Last of Us was nominated for the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Award for 'Best Kiss'. pic.twitter.com/Ql3uHHF9sC
— Erwin Vogelaar (@ErwinVogelaar) April 6, 2023
Fans of 2023’s breakout hit The Last of Us were outraged that two iconic queer relationships in the series were not acknowledged in the Best Kiss category. Instead, the scene in which an infected Cordycep zombie Stalker played by Prajoux forcibly kisses Tess (Australian actor Anna Torv), was nominated in the Best Kiss category.
One social media user said the choice of Stalker’s “kiss” when there were worthy queer romances in the series was “baffling”.
The queer romance in question included the beautiful love story between Bill and Frank, played by Nick Offerman and out gay actor Murray Bartlett. The other one was the first kiss between Bella Ramsey’s character Ellie and her friend Riley played by Storm Reid.
“The Last Of Us had two of the greatest kisses across TV and yet the MTV Awards would rather give a forced kiss a nomination over the two beautiful queer ones. Make it make sense,” posted another social media user.
