Finn Bennett: Unexpected beefcake in "Backrooms" leads down a rabbit hole of gay erasure. With some nude Finns and Whishaw butt

Last weekend we saw Backrooms (2026), which  is not about the backrooms of gay bars where you get down with dudes. Based on a creepypasta, it stars Chiwetel Ejofor as Clark, a struggling furniture store owner and failed architect, who stumbles onto an Upside Down: endless yellow-walled office rooms, most empty, some with piles of melting chairs, bloody clothes, a Christmas tree, a mannikin equipped with a recording in Urdu...and misshapen, half-melted humanoids.

Clark recruits his employee Kat and her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett), who photographed one of his commercials, to explore with him.  When he knocks on their door, Bobby answers shirtless.

As we have seen with the shirtless parking valets on Suburgatory, unexpected beefcake still has power. .  This screenshot doesn't capture the sudden joy of recognition.  I went home and looked up Finn Bennett.

Preliminary research yielded this photo on his Instagram, with the comment "I'm just a boy who likes to have fun."  I can see that.  

And a Google AI statement that he played a character "implied to be homosexual" in Domina.  

That's enough to start a profile.

I was expecting a recent university graduate with some theatrical experience and a few minor on-screen roles, but it turns out that Finn won the Trophée Chopard at Cannes in 2025, and was named a Star of Tomorrow by Screen International.  

He has his own wikipedia page, and so do his parents:

Ronan Bennett, famous novelist and screenwriter.

Georgina Henry, famous journalist, who died in 2014

Finn was born in December 1999 in Hackney, a rough but rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of East London.  He took acting classes at Stagecoach Performing Arts in Islington, and appeared in a 2013 episode of Top Boy, his dad's show about drugs and gangs in East London.  I know the area very well.

After taking his A-levels in maths, Finn applied to Queen's University, Belfast.  In Britain you have to apply to a field of study, so he found anthropology near the top of the list and figured "that's good enough.  I'll study that."  But then he decided to forego uni altogether in purusit of an acting career, and worked in pubs and as a landscaper while awaiting his big break.  I'll check the highlights for gay characters:

Four episodes of Liar (2017-20), about a teacher who accuses the guy she went on a date with (Ioan Gruffud) of rape.  He plays Ewen, one of her students.

Left: is that his ear or his dick?

Four episodes of National Treasure: Kiri (2018): A black girl is murdered just as she is about to be adopted by a white family.  He plays Simon, the family's teenage son, a suspect (spoiler alert: he didn't do it).

Hope Gap (2019): A husband and wife announce to their adult son (Josh O'Connell) that they're divorcing.  According to the AI, Mom encounters a young man who has just lost his boyfriend, but I don't know if he is Finn's character.

Finn's big break came with the ancient Roman drama Domina (2021): Livia Drusilla struggles to acquire power, eventually becoming the wife of Gaius (Augustus Caesar).   Marcellus (Finn) is forced to marry Gauis' daughter Julia.  Sorry, AI, he's not just "implied," he has an explicitly sexual realtionship with his slave Aprio (Pedro Leandro).  

The show was criticized for making the only gay character creepy, violent, and "deeply unpleasant." 

Finn's next major role came in Series 4 of the anthology series True Detective (2024),  with Jodie Foster investigating murders in a research station in Alaska.  He plays Peter Prior, her protégé, with a wife and a corrupt cop dad.

In the spy drama  Black Doves (2024), Cole Atwood (Finn) is a CIA operative assigned to the British Embassy.  Helen and Sam (Ben Whishaw) think that he murdered the Ambassador, but he turns out to be innocent. Sam (bottom) is gay, but presumably Cole is straight.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

In 2025, the year of the Trophée Chopard, Finn starred in the Game of Thrones prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2025) as Prince Aerion Targaryen, "brash, arrogant, cruel, and sadistic."  He doesn't express any heterosexual interest in the tv show, but in the original novels he marries his cousin and has a son before he dies.

Prisoner (2026): Amber, a  prison official, is transporting a high-profile inmate (Tibor Raham, right) to testify in a federal trial, but things go wrong. Finn plays Olly, Amber's good-natured husband, a stay-at-home dad.

And Backrooms (2026), as a photographer who answers the door shirtless. 

Whew, that's a lot of heterosexual husbands and boyfriends.  And a gay character presented with unadulterated homophobia. 

Shudder. You never know what you'll find when you begin a profile based on a beefcake shot.

It looks like Finn was just pretending to be gay in that photo on Instagram.  He has a live in girlfriend, Anna Lambe, whom he met while working on True Detective. 

She only appears in one Instagram photo, and they're not hugging, but some guys like to closet their heterosexual interest.  I don't know why.

I'm not really interested in seeing Finn Bennett's dick anymore, so how about a random Finn?

And Finn from Adventure Time (Thanks to AllDrawParty).

See also: Sonny Kendall: Obviously gay, too young for nude photos, so his EastEnder teen had better pay off. With Boreanaz and twink cocks

Stranded on the Isle of Dogs, and Other Hassles, Horrors, and Hookups of My First Visit to England

"Knight of the Seven Kingdoms": Some bare bums, some cocks, bondage, and queerbaiting in this magic-free prequel to "Game of Thrones"

The shirtless parking valets: A shock of joy on "Suburgatory" on the night before Thanksgiving. With Mohr and Parker butts and a lot of bare chests