Evan Todd stars in the new coming out buddy comedy 4th Man Out.
By Brandon Voss
"It’s a coming out story with substance, but it’s not tragic,” says Evan Todd of 4th Man Out, which opens February 5. “And it’s a comedy about a gay guy, but it’s not campy. It’s not your typical gay film.”
Written by Aaron Dancik and directed by Andrew Nackman, 4th Man Out stars Todd as Adam, a small-town mechanic who comes out to his pack of bros on his 24th birthday. Todd chooses his words carefully when explaining why he was drawn to the role, the kind of butch, Grindr-ignorant gay dude he feels is underrepresented on screen. “It’s a touchy subject,” he admits. “When people say that a certain gay character feels stereotypical or not real, you can always point to someone that character represents. But I don’t feel any real connection to those characters at all. I was really glad that the first gay character I got to play, even though his sexual orientation is at the forefront of the film, was presented in a way I felt was really honest and modern.” Could Todd pull off a more flamboyant role in the future? “I don’t think so,” says the actor, who played a half-naked jock off-Broadway in Heathers: The Musical. “Not that I don’t want to, but I know people who could do it much better than I can.”
Todd, who grew up in Kissimmee, Fla., can also relate to Adam’s coming out. “I actually felt more comfortable with my straight friends — and straight guys in general — after I came out,” he says. “Because suddenly I could be myself and not worry about hiding anything.” That comfort benefited the buddy scenes with his 4th Man Out co-stars, Arrow’s Parker Young, Glee’s Chord Overstreet, and Younger’s Jon Gabrus. “Whenever we’d hang out, it was pretty much the same as what you see in the movie — right down to all their questions and curiosities.”
Coming out professionally was more of a happy accident for Todd, who wrote articles referencing his sexuality for his college publication, the Juilliard Journal. “I didn’t realize when you Googled my name that would be one of the first things that popped up,” says Todd, who also created Juilliard’s Gay-Straight Alliance. “But I made it clear to every agent and manager I met with that I didn’t want it to be a secret. Yeah, I know it’s probably going to affect my career on some level, because we’re not quite there yet, but I want to be a part of that change."
Next, February 2016.