Gus Kenworthy Shuts Down Haters Who Say He Can't Play Straight on 'AHS: 1984'

Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy recently found a new gig, playing muscle hunk Chet Clancy on "American Horror Story: 1984." But the out athlete is responding to haters who say he can't play a straight dude on the FX anthology series.

"AHS: 1984" primers last week and follows a group of young adults who decide to work at the spooky Camp Redwood for the summer while an escaped mental patient looms. The season is a throwback to 80s slasher films like "Friday the 13th," "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Sleepaway Camp." But before the show even debuted, Kenworthy called out critics in an essay for ESPN who doubted he could play a straight person.

"When Ryan [Murphy] announced he'd hired me to play Emma's boyfriend, he and I both received a lot of negative comments online," he wrote. "Some people wanted to know how I was cast as a straight man or if I could play straight. Is that even a question? I spent the first 23 years of my life playing a straight man.

"Every gay man has the experience at some point in his life of pretending to be someone he's not," he added. "I knew as a teenager that I was gay, yet I was still sleeping with girls, pretending to be straight, playing this persona I thought I needed to be for my sport. The stakes were so high. I remember going to crazy lengths to make people believe I was someone I was not. That's acting."

Click here to read Kenworthy's full essay.