Openly gay Olympic freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy has landed the role of the boyfriend of Emma Roberts’ character in Season 9 of “American Horror Story,” the show’s writer-director Ryan Murphy announced.
“That special moment when you realize you have an Olympic medal AND will be playing Emma Roberts’ boyfriend on ‘American Horror Story’ Season 9,” Murphy wrote as the caption to a shirtless photo of Kenworthy on Instagram.
Kenworthy also commented on Instagram: “I guess the cat’s out of the bag… I’m 👏🏼 So 👏🏼 Fucking 👏🏼 Shook.”
Not much has been revealed about the plot line for Season 9, though Roberts has appeared in previous seasons of the anthology.
Kenworthy has acted before, including in 2017′s “Sharknado 5: Global Swarming.”
Kenworthy, 27, won a silver medal in slopestyle at the 2014 Olympics, but he became famous after coming out as openly gay in 2015. He did not medal in the 2018 Olympics, but his kiss on live TV of boyfriend Matt Wilkas before competing was a viral moment of the Games.
Coming out was the best decision Kenworthy ever made and has led to opportunities that he could only have dreamed of while closeted. It should demolish that fear among many LGBT athletes that coming out would be career suicide. For Kenworthy, it was his salvation.
