After making her name in The Crown and now starring in Netflix’s latest acclaimed miniseries, Adolescence, Erin Doherty is proud to be queer woman with a growing platform. Now the British actress is opening up about how she came to realize that she was gay in the first place.
On Tuesday, Doherty guested on the How to Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast, where she discussed her coming out story. In particular, she explained why it took so long for her to realize who she was.
“It took me a really, really long time to finally get to the point where I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gay,’” she said, “but I think, again, because I grew up doing the social thing of going, ‘Oh, OK, well, I’ll have a boyfriend and I’ll do this thing’ and I never questioned it.
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“Knowing who I was in my heart of hearts, in my soul, it took me a really long time. No one in my life had shown me that that was an option, so I just never applied it to myself so it took a while to really go, ‘Oh, this is something that I can have,’ which also leans into the whole people pleaser thing.
“I never really was ready to carve out that path for myself, even though looking back, I always knew that my relationships with men weren’t satisfying in that whole hearted way that I wanted them to be.”
The revelation came in her mid-20s when Doherty got into a relationship with a woman. “It was mind blowing and it felt like I had come home,” she recalled, adding, “I was just like, ‘Wow, this is a part of who I am that I’d never got to meet’ which was just so crazy.”
Now that Doherty is in the public eye, she hopes to make the path to acceptance easier for other people. “I wouldn’t change it because it’s really made me adore that part and really cherish it and I just hope that I get to offer that to other women or men, whoever you are just lean into your truth because there was something so monumental about that moment of going, ‘Whoa, this is me’ and just embracing it and not applying anything else to it. I just think we all deserve that.”
Doherty’s first breakout role came as Princess Anne in The Crown. Her latest project is the hit drama miniseries Adolescence, where she plays Briony Ariston, a clinical psychologist working with 13-year-old boy Jamie (Owen Cooper) accused of murdering a classmate. The single shot drama is quickly garnering acclaim for its bristling performances and unflinching subject matter.
Adolescence is currently streaming on Netflix.
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