Tom Daley remembers quite vividly his first time at a gay bar. The Olympic gold medalist diver was 19 at the time and it was the night before he came out in a YouTube video.
“There was this towering drag queen and all of these people just being free,” Daley, now 31, recalls on today’s episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast. “I was like, ‘This world of being able to just be yourself and not worry about who’s watching was so like, oh my gosh.’ It was the first time that I went from being scared to being excited about coming out and being able to just care less about what other people think.”
And he hasn’t looked back. Since then, he regularly hears from other queer – and often closeted – athletes. “They don’t know what to do, how to navigate and obviously coming out in certain places is a very different experience than coming out in the U.K. or the U.S., so it can be quite dangerous,” Daley says. “I always say to them that I can be there as a sounding board just because it is a very lonely experience.”
Daley’s life is chronicled in the new documentary, “Tom Daley: 1.6 Seconds.” The film follows his childhood in the U.K., competing in several Olympics (he earned his lifelong dream of a gold medal in 2020), the death of his father when he was still a teen and his current life in Los Angeles, where he lives with his husband, Oscar winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, and their two sons.
“I wasn’t sure about doing it initially,” Daley says of the doc, which is available on Discovery+ and Olympics.com. “And then I thought, ‘You know what? This is something that I would love to be able to then show my kids in the future and be able to be like, ‘Look, this is what Papa did. This is the thing that Papa was doing day in, day out’ And the things that I did, and be able to get to know the relationship I had with my dad and all of that stuff.”
He says he had to ask to take a break from filming most often when the director, Vaughan Sivell, showed videos with him and his father. “I model lots of my parenting and lots of the things that I do every day around what I learned from my dad,” Daley says. “He my biggest cheerleader. He was there for every training session, every competition, and he was a huge part of my life, day in, day out.
“Losing him was one of the most difficult things that I ever had to deal with,” he continues. “Yet I was dealing with that in a very public way in the U.K. Looking back on all of that footage was quite challenging to watch because I felt really sorry for the younger Tom that I kind of was just carrying on and putting on a brave face, and I didn’t ever want to bother anyone with how I was feeling because I didn’t want to ever make anyone else feel uncomfortable. I think if that’s one thing that I hope people get from the documentary is that it’s okay to lean on other people for help.”
Tom Daley at a screening for “Tom Daley: 1.6 Seconds” in London.
Getty Images for Warner Bros. Di
Daley also opens about facing body image issues. It all began when someone mentioned to him during his diving career that his body was changing, that he wasn’t as lean and toned as he once was. “I still struggle with it,” Daley says. “I’ve gone from training six hours a day, six days a week, to now being retired. People always have an expectation of what I look like. And so it can be quite a challenge, but at the same time, it can be quite hard. But I have to learn the new me, what is that regime that I have in terms of working out what I can and can’t eat.”
He says he’s continually working on accepting where he is today. “I know rationally I’m doing just fine, but there’s always part of me that knows that when you know what you can look like as an Olympic athlete in your peak and how hard that was to get there, it’s challenging to know that you might not ever look like that again,” Daley says.
While there are no plans for a scripted feature about his life, I ask Daley who he’d want to play him in a movie. “Tom Holland,” he says. “He’s got the gymnastic-y vibe. I feel like we’re quite similar in that. So I reckon Tom Holland could maybe do that.”
And who would portray his husband, who won the original screenplay Oscar in 2009 for “Milk”?
Daley smiles, “I think he would definitely want to cast Joel Kinnaman to play himself.”
When we talked, Pride Month was just a couple of weeks away. Daley reflected on what this time of year means to him. “It’s a really important time to remember where we came from rather than just being there to enjoy the festivities of it all,” he says. “I think that’s something that we always have to keep at the front of our minds, but for me it’s about fighting for freedom and continuing to fight for the freedoms and the liberties that people before us have fought for. And it’s about creating change for the future and for the younger generations.”
You can listen to the full conversation with Daley on “Just for Variety” above or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
