2023 Rewind: Small Screen, Hot Gay Sex: 'Chippendales,' 'White Lotus' Hunk Murray Bartlett Opens Up

This piece is part of EDGE's 2023 Rewind series. We're reaching into our archives and sharing some of our favorite stories from the past year.

Australian hunk Murray Bartlett offered his thoughts on how gay sex on the small screen has undergone an "evolution" from coy and nearly absent to last year's memorable rim job moment, which electrified viewers of HBO's "White Lotus."

Bartlett has kept busy since then; he spoke with British LGBTQ+ outlet Pink News about his recent miniseries "Welcome to Chippendales," which premiered in the U.S. on Hulu in November.

In his comments to Pink News, Bartlett noted that he's not necessarily focused on pushing the boundaries of steamy same-sex content on TV. "What I am interested in, and what I'm pleased to see, is the intimacy between queer characters and the evolution that we're seeing," he told the site. "We are seeing a real evolution of that in terms of those queer intimate scenes that are actually intimate."

Not that his history-making tête-à-tête with "White Lotus" screen partner Lukas Gage – between whose buttocks Bartlett burrowed in an instantly iconic moment during the hit show's first season – wasn't intimate. However, Bartlett said, the true impact of that depiction of sexuality between men (which he and Gage cooked up between them on set) was "not about the specifics of what they're doing in that scene, you know, physically" so much as the emotional charge between the two characters; "we all crave intimacy and connection," the handsome actor noted.

Still, there's an undeniably overt element of unapologetic gay sexuality in Bartlett's. As the Daily Beast noted ahead of the U.S. premiere of "Welcome to Chippendales," "He's playing gay characters who also have sex – and the audience sees that sex happen. Even in 2022, that still seems transgressive."

To that point, the article took note of how Bartlett's character in Hulu's eight-episode limited series "Welcome to Chippendales," Nick di Nioia, had a steamy hookup (or several), as well as how he portrayed "meaningful, realistic [sex] scenes in 'Tales of the City' [and] 'Looking.'"

"When you get the chance to play a character that's part of a community that's underrepresented in the media," Bartlett told the Daily Beast, "it always feels like a responsibility. 'How can I really bring authenticity and humanity to this character in a way that might be illuminating for people who don't have any queer people in their life?'"

"I think showing intimacy between queer characters is something that is still a little unfamiliar to some people," Bartlett went on to say. "And it's a universal thing to be able to show intimacy between characters."

Added the actor: "Any connection points that we can make in these times when we're very divided... It's a beautiful thing."

More of Bartlett's beauty is to come: He features in HBO's adaptation of "The Last of Us" as a major gay character. The new series premieres Jan. 15.