Is Wentworth Miller Gay? ‘The Flash,’ ‘Prison Break’ Season 5 Actor Once Feared Macho Michael Scofield

As the Prison Break Season 5 release date creeps ever closer, some fans may be surprised to hear that Wentworth Miller is gay, especially considering that he now plays the sinister Captain Cold in The Flash and Legends Of Tomorrow. The actor came out in 2013, but he also revealed that he was scared to come out while playing the role of the macho Michael Scofield, since he feared the revelation would harm his acting career.

In a related report by the Inquisitr, Fox officially confirmed that Prison Break Season 5 is coming back in 2016, but so far, the details about the exact release date are limited. [UPDATE] Dominic Purcell has given more details about the premiere date, although he admitted that timing issues have been created due to the contractual conflict between Warner Bros and Fox, which may delay things a little.

The interesting part about the actor’s revelation was the timing. According to ABC, Wentworth Miller came out as gay in August of 2013, but this was around four years after the final episode of Prison Break Season 4 aired. Although he had stayed in the closet all this time, the tipping point came when he was asked to attend a film premiere in Russia, which has some fairly strict anti-gay laws.

“I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government,” he wrote in a 2013 letter to the St. Petersburg International Film Festival committee. “The situation is in no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systematically denied their basic right to live and love openly.”

During a speech, Miller said that he often felt stressed out because he had to speak the right way, stand the right, and hold his wrists the right way. He felt there was a “price to pay” if he did “not live up to someone else’s standards of what was acceptable.” In addition, Miller’s racial background made for an interesting childhood, since Miller’s father is of African, Jamaican, English, German Jewish, and Cherokee descent, and his mother is of Russian, French, Dutch, Syrian, and Lebanese descent.

“My father is black and my mother is white. Therefore, I could answer to either which kind of makes me a racial Lone Ranger, at times, caught between two communities,” he said, according to the Prison Break Wikia.

The Prison Break actor struggled with his own identity so much that he attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of pills. He was only 15-years-old, but no one noticed, and by the next week he was back to school and “pretending everything was fine.”

He continued to pretend everything was fine for many years into his adulthood. When he was offered the role of Michael Scofield, he was scared to come out as gay, since he feared it would impact his acting career.

“In that time, I gave thousands of interviews I had multiple opportunities to speak my truth which is that I was gay,” he said. “But I chose not to … I chose to lie. When I thought about the possibility of coming out, how that might impact me and the career I worked so hard for, I was filled with fear. Fear and stubborn resistance that had built up over many years.”

Prison Break Season 5: How Will Went Worth Miller’s Michael Live?

If you want more Prison Break spoilers, a previous article discusses in detail how Michael may live, but Fox Co-Chairman and CEO Dana Walden has already given some hints about how Wentworth Miller’s character is still alive and escaping from high security prisons.

“What [Paul] pitched to us was a very logical and believable — in the world of Prison Break — explanation for why our characters are alive and still moving around the world,” Walden said.

Michael died via electrocution during the straight-to-DVD release, Prison Break: The Final Break, but Walden says Prison Break Season 5 will represent a “pure vision” by show creator Paul Scheuring, and it will also take a “detour” from where the DVD ending left fans. Whether it be a rewrite of the previous ending, or a new Prison Break sequel which ignores the DVD ending, Fox believes fans will feel satisfied by the real ending.

[Image via Prison Break/Fox]