In a recent interview with Radio Times magazine, actor Richard Armitage causally came out while discussing his new Netflix series Obsession.

Armitage has long kept quiet about the subject and avoided discussing his personal life in interviews even as rumors began to swirl about Armitage’s sexuality after Sir Ian McKellen let slip that a number of his co-stars were gay, in The Hobbit including actors who played “two of the dwarves.”

Armitage reflected on coming out to the people in his life when he was a teen and why he didn’t want to talk about it publicly for so long:

“[Coming out] happened when I was 19–to anybody who mattered–and I was always waiting for that question to punch me in the face, and it never did,” Armitage says. “I thought, ‘Are people being polite, or is it that they don’t want to know?’”

He continues: “I don’t know that I ever wanted to put myself in front of the work I was doing, anything about my family or personal life. I just thought, ‘Let the work speak for itself. If I declare who I am and my sexuality, then I’m saying it’s fixed and I don’t know that, or if I might feel something for somebody further down the line. I doubt it, but I don’t know. It’s more relaxed now. As a writer and producer, I do wonder if anybody has to be defined by who they’re in love with.”

“I love the conversation with the younger generation. I love the idea that whatever gender, sexuality, the fluidity of who you love, how you identify, is not fixed. That was always a thing: If I declare who I am and my sexuality, then I’m saying it’s fixed and I don’t know that, or if I might feel something for somebody further down the line. I doubt it, but I don’t know. It’s more relaxed now. As a writer and producer, I do wonder if anybody has to be defined by who they’re in love with.”

Welcome to the Tribe Richard!

WOOF!