It feels a little disingenuous to me when I hear people say "how many gay actors have won oscars for straight roles?" in this context because this is a play, not a movie. If the question were how many gay actors have won Tonys for straight (or sexuality-unspecified) roles, it's a different list--off the top of my head, Simon Russell Beale, Ben Platt, Gavin Creel, Billy Porter (I know there's disagreement about this character's sexuality), David Hyde Pierce, Andre de Shields, and I'm sure there's more, not to mention plenty of gay actors who have won for gay roles. It's a slightly different world in theatre vs. film/tv.
And, as a gay man (I feel weird about using that phrase to give credence to my opinion, but I suppose it's relevant, and clearly there is NOT a unanimous opinion in our community) I feel uncomfortable with the idea that actors MUST be out to play a certain role. That controversy about the young man in the Heartstopper show made me so sad, that actor was on a journey of self-discovery and needed to come out on his own terms but received so much online hate for taking his time in his coming out process. Mark Harris recently wrote an interesting article about the "queer-baiting" discourse around that incident and Harry Styles, it was well worth the read.
I always assumed that Mike Faist was gay and just not famous enough for his sexuality to be of public record? I didn't think it was a matter of being closeted for the sake of his career, but rather that nobody cared enough to report that information. That's just a total assumption, though, for all I know he could be straight. Personally, I don't really care all that much. I'm not apathetic to the issue, but it's undeniable that the politics of representation in the theatre have shifted massively in the last decade or two.
