Now, the actor who plays Tyler, Devin Druid, has made an official statement about playing the troubled character who undergoes such a difficult scene.
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, the 20-year-old actor discussed the backlash he has received after the intense scene.
“You know, I think people are always gonna have opinions on the show and what we do, but I think it's staying true to what the show has been about and that has been taking on these tough issues and trying to show them in these truthful lights,” he says. “We can't sugarcoat it or censor it at all because that's not how these events happen. And I think it is this trying to portray and make people understand what happens in these unfortunate and tragic circumstances.”
Druid told the online news site he is aware that his role in the popular Netflix series was one that held a whole lot of responsibility.
“As an actor, I felt a lot of responsibility to accurately portray the pain and humiliation that one can go through when they're assaulted in this way, especially with the stigma around sexual assault with men,” he revealed.
“Especially this age of kind of toxic and fragile masculinity, I think that plays a big part in this idea of men being raped, it's not something that people think about a lot,’ he adds. “And then as a male character, what does that feel like for you in a society where you're told this shouldn't happen to you, and not that it should happen to anybody, but that this can’t happen to you, but it does, what does that do to you on a mental level as well as physically obviously an enormous amount of pain.”
The young actor also explained that he undertook thorough background research to aid him in the depiction of such a heavy scene.
“One of the things I did, I reached out to actor David Morse, who very famously portrayed one of the first male victims of sexual assault,” he continues. “He was lovely in talking to me and giving me plenty of advice and talking me through the scenes and giving me amazing resources to look up about the scene that I was gonna be tasked with and was incredibly helpful.”
