There was much hubbub on the internet yesterday over some comments that Looking star Russell Tovey (who plays Kevin on the show) made in an interview with the UK Observer. Tovey, who stars in a new British series called Banished, spoke candidly about the fact that his dad wouldn't let him attend the drama school that some of his friends went to, and as a result he had to "toughen up" and became less "effeminate."

Tovey, who is gay, really kind of stepped in it with this one, and Facebook, Twitter, and the gay media the world over took him to task for what sounded like some pretty clear internalized homophobia — not to mention the implied insult to effeminate gay men, saying, "If I’d have been able to relax, prance around, sing in the street, I might be a different person now. I thank my dad for that, for not allowing me to go down that path."

Well, now, Tovey has issued an apology directly to fans via Twitter, where he has over 200,000 followers.

Arguably, Tovey was mostly just talking about his type, as an actor, and how his career has probably been helped by his masculine persona — not denigrating effeminate men everywhere, necessarily.

But reactions to the apology have been mixed, with OUT noting that it's kind of a "non-apology" and BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner saying the following:

All previous Looking coverage on SFist.