wants to remind Us to drink milk, and we’re definitely paying attention.
The Shameless Fund, an organization that supports LGBTQIA+ nonprofits through creative collaborations, uploaded a social media video of Bailey, 36, chugging a glass of milk. At the end of the video, Bailey looked straight into the camera and used his thumb to wipe away the extra milk. In a follow-up video, he quipped, “Drink your milk.”
The Bridgerton star wore a T-shirt designed by Loewe that read, “Drink Your Milk.” A portion of the proceeds of the merchandise will be donated to the Shameless Fund. Several of Bailey’s Fellow Travelers costars — including and — also posed for the campaign.
Bailey is queer, previously revealing that he first came to terms with his sexuality at a London Pride event in 2006.
“I was doing a play, I took over from in Beautiful Thing, and I was in rehearsals, and they took me to Pride to understand the community. And I remember that moment. But it wasn’t my time,” Bailey recalled to Attitude magazine in 2020. “The most conservative conversations I’ve had about me being honest about my sexuality in this day and age have come from gay men in the industry, ‘Oh, no, you can’t come out. You shouldn’t really do that.’”
He continued, “This was at a stage where perhaps I was coming to terms with my own sexuality, I hadn’t necessarily hidden it. But I’ve never been not honest about it. It’s just there had never been a need to talk about it. There’s a sense of shame, I think, that’s palpable throughout gay men within the industry. But then there’s also this heteronormative, heterosexual understanding of sexuality.”
While Bailey is now proudly out in the LGBTQIA+ community and has a long-term partner, he prefers to keep his love life to himself. While speaking to the U.K.’s Evening Standard in December 2023, Bailey called his partner a “lovely man.”
“Having a private life is, for me, completely critical,” Bailey told the Evening Standard. “I don’t know if I would be able to be as confident to speak out on other things if I felt that my whole life was up for grabs.”
Four years earlier, Bailey and his boyfriend shared a kiss after the actor won an Olivier Award for his role in the West End revival of Company.
“It’s been a life-changing experience for me at a time where acknowledging the very existence of LGBT people in our schools is being questioned, we have been able to — as a company — show a lovely and celebratory snapshot of gay love,” Bailey said in his acceptance speech about the gender-swapped production. “That LGBT people really aren’t that different. We’re not that different; we’re just as anxious [and] we’re just as flawed and desperate to fall in love as everyone else.”
