Zak Ford Williams: "Better," "Battery," "Bridgerton," and the British Stonewall: all gay roles all the time. With a lot of cocks.

  

Awhile ago I profiled Ruben Reuter, the "short guy with a dick" who starred in the Channel 4 Pushers.  In 2023 he appeared in the short Mobility (2023),  about three high school students with different disabilities riding the same bus every day.  

I decided to check out his co-stars -- maybe the others were gay, too -- and found the extremely attractive Zak Ford-Williams. 

Zak was born in Ramsbottom, about 15 miles from Manchester, in 1999.  Growing up, he was deeply involved in the theater, joining Summerseat Players and the Manchester Royal Exchange Young Playes.  He took his secondary schoola at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (high school) and university at the Manchester School of Theatre (B.A., 2020).

His first on-screen role was in a 2021 episode of Wolfe, with Babou Ceesay as a university professor/ murder investigator.  The team finds evidence of a ritual killing in a "giant fatberg" in Manchester's sewers ( a fatberg is a giant blockage).  Zak's character offers to guide them into the sewer, and then attacks.

Next Zak had a recurring role in Better (2023), about a corrupt police detective striving to "do better."  Her son Owen (Zak), disabled after a bout of meningitis,  starts a relationship with the Crime Lord's son Donal (Ceallach Spellman, left).

The short Battery (2023) is set during a lockdown that has turned London into a post-Apocalyptic nightmare.  A boy with cerebral palsy (Zak), forbidden to leave the flat because "it's not safe," sneaks out and braves the mean streets to reunite with his boyfriend (Nadeen Islam, who performs stand-up as "the only brown deaf gay man in England")  It was repeated in the anthology movie 4Love (2023).  

Next came an episode of the long-running  Midsommer Murders.  Ludo Trask, a teenager obsessed with a book supposedly containing clues to a treasure -- and its author, who ends up murdered.  Spoiler alert: he didn't do it.  No heterosexual interest mentioned.

Two episods of Bridgerton, as the snarky gossip-girl Lord Remington (dig the old-timey wheelchair).  He hangs out with Penelope (left), but does not express any romantic interest in her.

And she is is busy courting Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton, left) and Alfred Debling (Sam Phillips)

If you're keeping score, that's five roles, two canonically gay, one gay vague, and two queer coded through lack of expressed heterosexual interest.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Zak's most recent on-screen role was The Hardacres (2024), a period drama with Liam McMahon (left, the one with the dick) as the head of a  poor family in 1890s Yorkshire.  They suddenly become rich, and purchase the ritzy Thornton Hall, to the consternation of the neighbors.  So, Bringing Up Father?  Or The Beverly Hillbillies?

Zak plays younger son Harry, who uses the family's newfound wealth to go off to university. He returns for his brother's wedding.  No heterosexual interest mentioned.

 The director notes that many period dramas omit disabled people, but they would have been very common.  "It's important that we don't accidentally rewrite history and erase people by making everyone pretty and clean."

I don't know -- Zak strikes me as very pretty and clean.

Let's check his theatrical record next:

A young adult Tiny Tim, who narrates the story of A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story.  Although adult, Tim does not get a girlfriend. 

We Were Told There Was Dancing is "an immersive, promenade-style performance" commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offenses Act (which decriminalized same-sex relations).  Dang, in the U.S. sodomy laws were invalidated the Supreme Court in 2003, but they're still on the books in some states. 

Nothing, about a group of teenagers trying to convince their suicidal friend that life has meaning.

Coram Boy: Two orphans in Georgian England. Aaron (Zak) is actually an heir to a vast fortune, and Toby escaped from a slave ship.  Sounds like a gay-subtext romance.

Joseph Merrick in The Real and Imagined History of the Elephant Man.  According to the director, this version tries to "give him a voice" as a disabled person, so the cast consists of deaf, paraplegic, and otherwise disabled persons, and there is no prosthetic makeup.  And no girlfriend.

And a Richard III set in the present, with the King suffering from MND (motor neuron disease).  

Zak doesn't have much of a social media presence -- his Instagram and Facebook contain performance photos only, and the n*de photos might not be him. But who can doubt that he is gay in real life?  I don't think he's ever played a straight character.

Maybe I should profile the third Mobility guy, Jack Carroll, next.

See also: Ruben Reuter: the wacky drug dealer of "Pushers," "Lord of the Flies" Percy, Channel Four journalist, Short Guy with a d*ck

Elias Harger: the "Fuller House" femme boy, victim of ghosts and maniacal mothers, grows up to date a Jewish champion. With hung Hagenbuch and some twinks.  Another Christmas Carol actor.

Gavin McHugh: The gay-vague kid from 9-1-1 is now a teenager, with male friends and risque comments. Bonus Tyler cock and costar butts.  Another guy with CP.

Two teenage boys are "Eaten by Lions" in this 2018 British comedy.  With Jack Carroll.