Ending the bi-as: From Baby Reindeer to Saltburn, male bisexuality is finally being seen on our screens

But it turns out there was a line that the movie wouldn’t cross, and it involved Sam Lombardo (Matt Dillon) returning home to find someone in his shower. In the movie released to audiences, out steps Ray Duquette (Kevin Bacon), completely naked, everything on show for the world to see.

However, the original version of the script went one step further, with Lombardo written to strip off and join Duquette in the shower for a steamy session together.

Years later, Bacon told Total Film that the producers weren’t too keen on their sex scene: “I thought it was great because the whole movie is about secrets coming out, right? As reveals go, that one was just huge. Unfortunately, the financiers didn’t like the idea of men making out. They felt it went too far. They felt it wasn’t right.”

Also in 1998, right after I Know What You Did Last Summer and right before Cruel Intentions, hot new talent Ryan Phillippe was headlining the drama 54, set in and around the rise and fall of the infamous Studio 54 nightclub in the late 1970s in New York. In the original cut of the movie, Phillippe plays a bisexual staff member caught in the middle of a love triangle that also contains characters played by Salma Hayek and Breckin Meyer. Following some less-than-glowing test screenings, all of Phillippe’s character’s sex scenes with men were removed, and additional scenes were ordered to be filmed with his new love interest, played by Neve Campbell.

As little as a quarter of a century ago, Hollywood seemed to be doing everything in its power to keep bisexual male characters in the closet… or on the cutting-room floor. It expanded to the point that even the movies that might be considered great gay romances have, in fact, been mislabelled.

​Brokeback Mountain features two men, played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, who are clearly in love with each other, but timing and circumstance force them apart. And in the absence of each other, they find love and start families with their wives. They are clearly bisexual men, but Brokeback Mountain has been and will likely be forever known as The Gay Cowboy Movie.

The same applies to Call Me by Your Name, in which we see both Timothée Chalamet’s and Armie Hammer’s characters engage in relationships with women, but the movie has been shorthanded as a gay coming-of-age modern classic.

These descriptions can perhaps come down to the level of representation that has been given to audiences over the years, because unless a character outright declares themselves as bisexual, viewers might jump over that descriptor entirely and assume the character is gay, or hasn’t come to terms with their homosexuality yet.

It is fair to assume that was representative of how male bisexuality had been viewed in reality, too. While female bisexuality has been more easily accepted — albeit often problematically with the fetishisation of the male gaze — male bisexuality has not been given that same opportunity. Too often it has been viewed as nothing more than a waystation to homosexuality, under a tagline of “Bi now, gay later”.

But as we’ve seen more and more lately, real life will eventually be reflected by the art we’re consuming, and that also goes for the representation of modern sexuality. According to a poll conducted by IPSOS in 2023, only 2pc of Gen X-ers would describe themselves as bisexual. That jumps to 4pc for millennials, and more than doubles again for Gen Z-ers, with 9pc of that generation self-identifying as bisexual.

And as almost one-in-10 people born in 1997 or after describe themselves as bi, the movies and shows they are watching are finally holding a mirror up to them. Over the last year alone, three of the most discussed movies and shows around the world have featured bisexual males at their core. It has been a joy to see big-budget, big-screen and immensely popular small-screen productions finally smash what was for too long something of a taboo.

​Barry Keoghan nakedly danced his way into our memory banks thanks to Saltburn, in which he plays the psychopathic student Oliver Quick with a dangerously problematic crush on his uber-rich classmate Felix (Jacob Elordi). In order to reach his ultimate goal, Quick seduces both Felix’s sister Venetia (Alison Oliver), as well as his best friend Farleigh (Archie Madekwe). In between all of the bathwater slurping and grave humping, it wasn’t the most progressive thing to see a bisexual person — spoiler alert — designated as a crazed killer, an issue around queer-coding villainy that has been spotlighted since Sharon Stone stole the show in 1992’s Basic Instinct.

Netflix must have been shocked when the dark drama Baby Reindeer blew up the way it did, with writer/director/star Richard Gadd giving the world an ever-so-slightly fictionalised take on his real story of obsessive stalkers and sexual abuse. Gadd self-identifies as bisexual, while his on-screen persona Donny takes us through his journey of sexual self-discovery — even if that journey is kicked off under some of the worst circumstances imaginable.

Then the world received the psychosexual complications at the heart of the movie Challengers. While both Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) have the hots for Tashi (Zendaya), she is immediately clued in to the fact that they also — deep down… deep, deep down — have the hots for each other. Helping them momentarily bring that passion to the surface, the resulting trifecta sees a hurricane of lust and love, rivalry and hatred, bringing out the best and worst in all of them.

Over the years, there have of course been high-profile nods to male bisexuality — Pedro Pascal as the much-loved Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones; Kit Connor as the newly out Nick Nelson in Heartstopper; Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal as amorous BFFs in Y Tu Mamá También; even the overly guarded likes of Disney and Marvel have alluded to Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his dalliances “with princes and princesses” — but never before have we seen them so intimately, so explicitly, and so regularly.

Representation on screen matters, and while that 9pc of Gen Z might self-identify as bisexual in an anonymous poll, who knows how many of those have yet to inform their family or friends, or even felt comfortable to act on it themselves. And for those who may not have even got as far as self-identifying as bisexual, the idea of “See it, be it” might lead to individual moments of self-discovery.

Cinemagoers and streaming subscribers are getting more and more opportunities to witness stories about men loving both women and other men, and those opportunities will lead to questions, to conversations, to a level of openness that will hopefully spread to those men who are living — or want to be living — as their true bisexual selves.

Baby Reindeer - Trailer