'Railroad Daddy' Steams Ahead with Provocative Question: 'Straight Guys Can't Bottom?'

Morgan Spector, star of "The Gilded Age" and the recently released queer comedy "I Can't Understand You," posed a question that raised Gay Twitter's eyebrows (and temperature).

Namely, he scoffed at the notion that bottoming is just for gay men. Adventurous straights, he noted, can have just as much fun in that role.

Fans promptly weighed in.

"Strongly agree 🔥" one person posted, while another simply went with, "Hot".

There was room for plenty of debate, though.

Others spoke less to the semantics and more to the antics.

Spector was featured in a profile and photoshoot for GQ, where he showed off at least a passing knowledge of gay culture. Pointing out a John Singer Sargent painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he noted to the interviewer that the work "could be a Tom of Finland."

The work, GQ specified, was "'Head of a Male Model,' an oil portrait of a mustachioed beauty with dark locks and a come-hither gaze."

"It sits beside another Sargent painting of a barely clothed, similarly mustachioed man, standing legs apart, hands behind his back, thighs like tree trunks in a G-string," the article went on to detail.

GQ thumbnailed Spector's career, cataloguing that he "has delivered memorable performances in everything from 'Homeland' to 'Boardwalk Empire' to 'How to Make It in America,'" but adding that the role of railroad entrepreneur George Russell in "The Gilded Age," opposite Carrie Coon's social-climbing Bertha Russell, has proven to be his breakout role.

George Russell's new-money story, set as it is in the 1870s when new frontiers were being explored and exploited and huge fortunes made, may reflect history, but the actor lends his character contemporary (and thirsty) appeal. GQ observed that fans call him "Railroad Daddy," with the inevitable puns being freely associated with that moniker (the outlet noted that "a fan-made 'Rail Me Daddy' T-shirt with Spector's face retails for $35 on Etsy").

In the upcoming third season of "The Gilded Age," George and Bertha face off over the future of their daughter, Gladys, whom Bertha wants to marry off to an English royal. George, meanwhile, takes a more progressive view, arguing that the young woman should be allowed to make such choices for herself. Bertha's tart rejoinder? That her businessman husband should stick to business, while she tends to the well-being, and future prospects, of their children. But does mother really know what's best?

Such were the sexual politics of the time. Today, things seem much more expansive, and Spector is just at home in contemporary culture as he is in his elegantly tailored period suits.

"He's not afraid of the gender spectrum," Coon told GQ. "He is at once hypermasculine, and also one of the most in touch with his feminine side I've ever met."

Spector himself seems to verify Coon's contention. When GQ asked the actor "about the time he declared in a roundtable that he identifies as a bottom, creatively," Spector explained, "I like being able to use my intuition and my intelligence to plug into somebody else's ideas, learn their language, learn their way of communicating, figure out what the thing is that they're trying to make, and then deliver that." He then recast himself from "creative bottom" to "service top."

When GQ recalled that the actor faced some pushback from literal-minded fans who accused him of queerbaiting, the actor leaned into the topic.

"Straight guys can't bottom?" Spector queried rhetorically. "I mean, people can play with dominance and submission in heterosexual relationships. We're living in a moment now where we're exploding ideas of gender."

"We deconstruct, these things are not fixed," he added. Then, in superb thespian fashion, he declared, "It's theater, baby. We're all playing in the same sandbox, in a certain way."

But his attitudes are not performative. GQ shared, "The morning after we talk, I open my Instagram feed to find that Spector posted a shirtless mirror selfie. Except, below his hirsute chest, Spector shared a link to Zohran Mamdani's campaign website. 'Go canvas!' he told his followers, gamely thirst-trapping for the cause."

That's only one of the captivating posts Spector has posted to his Insta.

We'd gladly play in Spector's sandbox.