“This period in history is very resonant for our community,” Russell Tovey says of Plainclothes. While set in the 90s, the romantic thriller feels urgently relevant today: recent reports reveal that the Amtrak Police Department has targeted a Penn Station cruising site, resulting in more than 200 arrests since 1 June. “We thought this was a period piece when we made it,” Tovey continues. “It’s wild that we’ve actually made something that’s highly contemporary, even though it was thirty years ago.”

Tom Blyth leads Carmen Emmi’s searing and masterful debut feature as Lucas, a working-class undercover officer tasked with investigating and apprehending gay men in public spaces. As he carries out these operations, he wrestles with the moral weight of his role and the personal torment of betraying a community he secretly belongs to. The stakes intensify when he finds himself irresistibly drawn to his latest target, Andrew (Tovey).

“I felt I hadn’t seen it before, and that’s always the first port of call when you’re reading any script, ‘Have I seen this story told before in this way?’ And the answer throughout reading it was no,” Blyth tells Gay Times. “It was a story that felt necessary, but also deeply personal.”

Here, Russell Tovey and Tom Blyth reflect on the making of Plainclothes; from why its story resonated with them as actors, to their characters’ inner conflicts and the importance of visible queer storytelling in today’s political climate. Carmen Emmi also discusses why he felt compelled to explore the world of plainclothes officers for his debut feature, how Tovey and Blyth’s on-screen chemistry deepened the film’s unexpected romance and whether he’d ever consider revisiting these characters again.

GT: Carmen, it’s wild to me that Plainclothes is your debut. It is so, so brilliant. While we’ve seen films set in periods oppressive toward LGBTQIA+ people, few have tackled this particular subject: plainclothes officers targeting gay men. What drew you to this story, and why did you choose it for your first film?

Carmen: I got the idea a few years after I came out, and I read an article in The LA Times about a 2014 sting operation in Long Beach, California, where undercover police officers were luring men in a park bathroom and getting them to expose themselves. I started interviewing officers and men who were arrested, and I learned that there were some cases where officers would maybe get aroused on the job, and that was fascinating to me.

That, coupled with my coming-out experience, made me think it would be really interesting to explore this through the lens of a police officer who was struggling with their sexuality. My brother was becoming a police officer, so that all informed why I wanted to tell this story, or at least my entry point into it. I also wanted to revisit the nineties because that’s when I started suppressing my feelings, and where my anxiety kind of started. In a way, it was a therapeutic exercise to revisit that time in my life.