Russell Tovey and Tom Blyth are teaming up for a new queer movie.
Blyth and Tovey will star opposite one another in Plainclothes, a new movie from writer/director Carmen Emmi, that is inspired by true events. Set in the 90s, the film follows “a working-class undercover officer” who “is tasked with entrapping and apprehending gay men, only to find himself drawn to one of his targets.”
The film’s producers, Arthur Landon and Colby Cote say the film “is a heartfelt story that deals with internal conflict, family, and the complexities of sexual identity in the face of societal and personal expectations.”
There’s a long history of police using undercover sting operations to entrap gay men and arresting them for crimes like “public indecency” in both Europe and America.
Famously, the singer George Michael was arrested by an undercover officer in Beverly Hills in 1998 who had followed him into a public bathroom and shown him his genitals. After Michael reciprocated, he was arrested for committing a “lewd act” in a public place.
Blyth became a breakout star when he played Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, and also stars in the MGM+ series Billy the Kid and has appeared in The Gilded Age.
Tovey, who is gay, is currently appearing in Feud: Capote vs. The Swans as Capote’s manager and lover John O’Shea, and also starred in the eleventh season of Ryan Murphy’s horror anthology American Horror Story.
Plainclothes is the first screenplay from Emmi.
