Showing posts with label Doctor Who. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doctor Who. Show all posts

Lewis Cornay: Actor/singer meets Doctor Who and a Bear, has Daddy issues, stands on his head. With nude Mormons and History Boys

 


I wasn't happy with Doctor Who 2023 series, on Disney Plus,  when they made the time-and-space jumping Time Lord gay for a season, then had him fall in love with his new companion, Belinda. Not only queerbaiting, but breaking 60 years of tradition: the Doctor never dates his companions.   

But I liked some of the cute guest stars, such as Lenny Rush as time-travel machine building super-genius Morris Gibbons (Episodes 1.7 and 1.8).

Samuel Sherpa-Moore as Tenzing Norgay, one of the men who reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1953 (The Season 1 Christmas special).


And Lewis Cornay as Logan Cheever, a cook in a diner in 1952 Miami (Episode 2.2).   He serves the Doctor and Belinda even though it's a "white only" diner in the Jim Crow era, and fills in the back story about people who mysteriously vanished in the chained-up theater across the street. 

When the all-powerful being trapped inside is finally defeated and the moviegoers released, he greets Tommy (Cassius Hackforth).  In my head canon, they're boyfriends.

Lewis has only three other acting credits listed on the IMDB, so I'm guessing he's new to show business:


The short A Bear Remembers (2025): A boy (Lewis) seeks out a wise, elderly bear (Ciaran Hinds, bear bod left), who remembers.





John & Jen 
(2021): Broadcast of a two person play.  Jen (Rachel Tucker) and her little brother  (Lewis) grow up in the 1950s, then drift apart. She becomes a hippie, and he goes to Vietnam, where he is killed.  Years later, she names her son (Lewis) after him. 

Wait -- Lewis and Rachel performed the original play at the Southwark Playhouse, London, in 2021.

The music video Silent Night (2018), sung by Kerry Mucklowe from the BBC's This Country, joined by the cast of Just So.

Just So is a musical based on Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling.  Lewis starred as the Elephant Child, the focus character, at the Barn Theater (Cirencester, west of Oxford), in 2018. 

Doctor Who may be Lewis's first tv role, but I gather that he has had an eventful career in the theater. 

There are several biographies in the promotional materials for his various plays.  He was born around 1995, and started his career with  Mary Poppins (2005), The Sound of Music (2008), and The King and I (2009), in prestigious sounding venues: The Prince Edward Theater, The London Palladium, Prince Albert Hall.   

He received a B.A. in Musical Theater (2017) from the Guildford School of Acting in Guildford, Surrey, about 25 miles from London, and went to work in musical theater.  His first role as a graduate was in Paw Patrol Live: Race to the Rescue (three shows a day, 2017).  Then came:


The Book of Mormon
 (2020): Lewis plays Elder Cross, one of the Mormon missionaries awaiting an assignment in the opening song, "Two by Two."  Elder Price (Andrew Rannells in the original Broadway production) asks him where he'd like to go, and he says "my favorite place in the world."  It ends up being Japan. 


She Loves Me (2022): Like You've Got Mail, but in 1961 Budapest, and with penpals instead of email. Lewis plays Arpad, a teenage delivery boy whose B Plot involves a gay-subtext buddy bond with shop owner Maraczek.  I don't know why he is sitting on Maraczek's bed in this shot.

Spongebob: The Musical (2023).  Spongebob.

Whistle Down the Wind (2022): A girl named Swallow thinks that an escaped convict is Jesus.  Lewis plays Amos, a teenage boy who is dangling two girlfriends at the same time.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Lenny Rush: Doctor Who's buddy, the Artful Dodger's boyfriend. a gay-vague vampire. With a lot of acting awards and co-star d*cks




In the 2023-24 season of Doctor Who, Episodes 1.7 and 1.8, the time-and-space zapping Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and his latest companion Ruby Sunday visit UNIT, the time-and-space anomaly-investigation agency, to solve two mysteries:

1. Why does an elderly woman pop up in various guises in all of their recent adventures?

2. Ruby's mother left her on a church doorstep on Christmas Day.  They want to go back in time to discover who she is, but the Doctor can't use his regular time-traveling power, for reasons, so they use one of UNIT's experimental devices.

Things go terribly wrong, of course, and they release Sutekh, the Great Beast, the Abomination, the Destroyer, the Bringer of Death, the One Who Waits...who actually looks rather like a giant dog.  He intends to destroy all life in the universe.  Well, it's better than yet another visit from the Dahh-leks.




UNIT is staffed primarily by the Doctor's retired companions, all ladies, but there are a few hunks wandering around: 

Tachia Newall (left) as Col. Chidozie, who gets sanded to death by the Giant Dog



Alexander Devrient as Col. Ibrahaim, whose muscles are praised by the Doctor (gay this season): "You've been working out!"

 Aneurin Barnard (butt in candlelight, left) as Roger ap Gwillam, who will become the most evil Prime Minister in the history of Britain.  




And a cute kid: Lenny Rush as12-year old super-genius Morris Gibbons, who runs the time-travel device, fights the Giant Dog, gets dusted and resurrected, and after the Dog's demise, invites everyone out to a pizza party.

Lenny was originally cast in Episode 1.1, as one of the sentient babies running an orbiting space nursery, but he was so great that they decided to cut his scene and cast him in this much bigger role.




As of this writing, Lenny is 16 years old and looks a bit younger, so I won't be searching for beefcake or n*de photos.  I'll post some of his co-stars instead.

But at  3'2" he's a perfect addition to the Short Guy Brigade, so I'm going to research the other usual questions of a profile:

1. Has he played any gay characters?

Lenny has 14 acting credits listed on the IMDB, beginning with 4 episodes of the animated Apple Tree House (2018-19) and 7 episodes of The Dumping Ground (2021-22), about children "dumped" in a foster home.

There were two lesbians in The Dumping Ground, but no gay boys.



Dodger
 (2022-23) featured the Victorian-era pickpocket Artful Dodger (Billy Jenkins, left) and his mentor Fagin (Christopher Eccleston) before their adventures in Dickens' Oliver Twist.  Lenny (right) played Morgan the Crossing Sweeper, the Dodger's gay-subtext boyfriend.

More after the break

The New Doctor Who, Season 2: The gay doctor fights robots and cartoon characters, and gets a girlfriend. With bonus Groff and Projectionist penises




The latest Doctor Who, that  time-and-space faring adventurer from the planet Gallifrey (played by Ncuti Gatwa), is the first to be black, and although there have been bisexual hints in the past, the first to be gay.  In Episode 1.6, he even gets a boyfriend, an interdimensional bounty hunter named Rogue (Jonathhan Groff, left).

At least, he was gay in the first season. 

I watched the first two episodes of Season 2, and I am sorry to report that the gay guy has turned straight.




In Episode 2.1, "The Robot Revolution," the teenage Belinda Chandra receives a gift from her sort-of boyfriend: a star.  It seems that you can "buy" a star and get a certificate stating that it's yours.  They break up soon after.  

17 years pass, and one night gigantic robots arrive to force Belinda to become the queen of "her" planet.  Apparently the certificate was a binding contract.

Left: Robert Strange plays the head robot.




To complicate things, the robots have taken control of the world.  Humans are forced into smiling servitude.  

The Doctor, stranded on the planet for the last six months, is starting a revolt with a squad of hunky humans, including Caleb Hughes and Max Parker, left.  

Soon into the revolt, the Doctor's girlfriend is killed.  Grieving, he explains that when he first arrived on the planet, she took him in and explained the situation.  "She took care of me.  She was wonderful."   The other freedom fighters tell him to buck up, they have a world to save.


The robots announce that Belinda is to marry the great AI Generator, who turns out to be the ex-boyfriend (Jonny Green, left), merged with a machine.  Belinda dumped him due to his controlling behavior, and this is the only way he could think of to get back together again. Maybe send her flowers?

So this was all about heterosexual romance?  They had an episode with an astronaut and his husband.  Two of the Doctor's companions have been lesbians.  How the mighty have fallen.

The Doctor and Belinda save the day.  Belinda asks to be taken home, but his space-and-time ship, the TARDIS, refuses to go to the day she left.  Maybe the next day?



In Episode 1.2, "Lux," some people are watching a movie in 1952 Miami.  Before the main feature, there's a cartoon featuring Mr. Ring-a-Ding, whose catchphrase is "Don't make me laugh!"  While he is busily romancing Sally Sunshine (yes, another hetero-romance), he jumps off the screen to scream at the audience.

Enter the Doctor and Belinda, taking a detour on the way home.  They notice that the theater door is chained, as if there's a wild beast inside.  

More after the break

Ten Dudes from Rejected Reviews: From Matt Bomer to Tom Goodman-Hill

I find potential movies and tv shows to review on my streaming service recommendations, the social media of actors I follow, and if I have just completed a profile of someone, like Cory Chapman or Michael Provost, their work on the IMDB.  If the premise is interesting, or there are two guys together on the icon, I might just click "play," but usually there's some research involved.


Do the episode synopses mention a same-sex friendship or rescue?  Is there minimal man-woman kissing in the trailer?  Are there any beefcake or nude photos of the male cast members?  

Sometimes I collect nude photos for illustrations, and then decide against the review after reading a plot synopsis or Rotten Tomatoes score, or after watching for a few minutes.  The result is a folder full of naked guys from rejected reviews.  I hate to delete them, so I'm posting them for their aesthetic value.

1. Adam Rayner in Tyrant: An American family drawn into the politics of a fictional Middle Eastern nation.  A gay guy eventually comes out and finds a boyfriend, who is killed,  I don't do the Bury Your Gays trope.  Next!


2. I was planning a review of "The Unicorn and the Wasp," a Doctor Who episode with gay characters, so I searched for "Christopher Tennant." 

"Christopher Benjamin" popped up,  nude on stage doing The Fairy Queen. But the full-sized photo was behind a pay wall, so I tried someone else in the cast, Robert Burt.

Except this isn't Robert Burt the stage actor. The link goes to a set of pictures illustrating the works of poet Robert Hamberger, models unknown. 


3. Turns out that the Doctor I was looking for was actually played by David Tennant.  A new search on "David Tennant" yielded Harry Lawtrey in Industry.

The British drama about job applicants in a finance firm had two gay characters, but the opening sequences were boring, so no review.  Next!





4. A reader recommended The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare for its buddy-bonding and beefcake.  As of this writing it's in theaters only, so I scanned its cast list and found Hero Fiennes Tiffin -- great name -- which led me to The Loneliest Boy in the World The boy appears to be falling in love with a boy zombie.   But it's not available on any of my streaming services. Next!


5. Depressing disease-of-the-week medical dramas are usually a resounding "No!", but The Good Doctor had a gay character played by Noah Galvin, so I researched him.  A former Hasidic Jew, conflicted, confused, self-doubting, guilt ridden, who finally gets a boyfriend -- only to have him killed on the day they become engaged.  

Before I noped out of there, I found some nude photos of Noah Galvin's real-life boyfriend, Ben Platt





More nude dudes after the break