Helen Mirren Outs Tomatoes As Bisexual, and She’s Kind Of Right
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A clip of Dame Helen Mirren has torn through right through the queer community, in which she very seriously says tomatoes are bisexual.
She’s not wrong, though!
Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon alongside Pierce Brosnan for their new Netflix series The Thursday Murder Club, Fallon brought out a board of ingredients to make a salsa live on air. Naturally, the ensemble included a ripe tomato.
“Incidentally, I just want to give you a tip about growing tomatoes,” Mirren told Fallon. “You know the little flower [on a tomato plant]? Well, a good way to get a tomato out of a flower, is you have to tremble the flower, like this.”
Mirren demonstrates what she means, wiggling her index finger up and down a little.
“Stop doing that,” Fallon said of the aforementioned tremble. “I’m not doing that, at all, to my tomatoes.”
“You’ve got to! A tomato is a bisexual thing, you see,” Dame Helen said to an uproar of laughter from Fallon and the audience. “Well, it is. I looked it up very recently because I had a problem with my tomatoes.”
Different strokes for different folks
As any green-thumbed lesbian would tell you, Mirren is absolutely correct. The flower of a tomato plant includes both male and female reproductive organs, meaning they’re able to self-pollinate.
Although most flowers have their pollen knocked from one reproductive organ to the other by an errant bee or a warm summer breeze, many gardeners take it upon themselves to get the job done.
Australian garden goddess Penny Woodward is one such gardener, and has spread the gospel on what she refers to as the “tomato shake”.
“I have a friend who swears by his electric toothbrush as a tool for increased pollination,” she wrote for the ABC. “He takes it into the garden, rests the brush against the stem of each flower cluster and gently vibrates the flowers to release pollen. Whatever pushes your buttons I guess.”
It’s not uncommon for Dame Helen to drop some queer truths during her media rounds. In 2019, she told Radio Times she doesn’t believe in binary sexuality.
“I came to the conclusion an awfully long time ago that there is black and there is white, and we’re all somewhere in the middle in a wonderful mix of male and female,” she said.
“There is no such thing as binary sexuality, when you’re male or female. I don’t believe that at all.”
