Jonathan (Sigh) Whitesell: Gay, Straight, Canadian?

On tv, transgender transitions always change your  sexual orientation.  Women when you had male physiology, and now that you have female physiology, men.  As is having a penis automatically makes you intererested in women, and a vagina makes you interested in men.  As if gay people do not exist.

I was gratified to find that The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina got it right.  Theo is a transman, but likes men.

And the man he likes: green-haired prankster with a hidden agenda Robin Goodfellow (aka Puck), played by Jonathan Whitesell (sigh).

Where have those abs been all my life?

Biographical details are sparce:  About an hour of internet research revealed only that Jonathan (sigh) grew up in Vancouver, graduated from Capilano University in 2015, and immediately got a manager and hit Hollywood.  The link to his personal website is broken, and his instagram and twitter feeds contain mostly ads for his performances.

An article on LiveRamp assures us that he is "of the straight orientation and has never mingled with men."  It goes on to gush about his girlfriend: "With a beautiful girl on his side, we can surely say that Jonathan is the luckiest man as he has a caring and supportive girl who has forever remained on his side"

Somebody needs an editor.

So there's nothing to do but go through his list of credits on IMDB to see if there's anything of interest.

The Kill Teams (2019); a young soldier in Afghanistan faces a moral quandary over his commanding officer's command to murder civilians.  What quandary?  That's an obvious war crime.Jonathan (sigh) is third billed.

Five 2019 episodes of Sabrina's sister show Riverdale, as the unhinged Kurtz, who really believes that the mythical Gargoyle Lord is about to ascend.  Oh, and he's also a drug dealer.

Bad Times at the El Royale Hotel (2018): Five people who are not what they seem show up at a seedy desert hotel.  There are deals, betrayals, machinations, and shoot-outs. Jonathan  (sigh) is not among the five; his character is killed by the hotel manager.  Heterosexist ending: A man and a woman survive to walk into the sunset together.

Hold the Dark (2018): When a six-year old boy is carried off by wolves, his mother hires a retired naturalist to help track him down in the Alaska wilderness.  And the two fall in love, of course. Jonathan (sigh) has a minor role.

Beyond (2016-2018):  Holden Matthews (The Beaver's son, I assume) wakes up from a 12-year coma a young adult with special powers and somebody trying to kill him.  Sounds entirely derivative, and it got horrible reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

Jonathan (sigh) is third billed as Luke, the boy's brother, a student at Central Kansas University (can you imagine anyplace more "Middle America"?). He has a girlfriend.

Not Falling Together (2017).  A male-female couple faces the Apocalypse.  Jonathan's character is named XY.  XY Chromosome, Male, biological imperative toward heterosexual coupling, I get it.

Never Steady, Never Still (2017): Mom with Parkinson's Disease, son with a "sexual awakening."  It took about twelve reviews to find out what that meant: the boy "questions his sexuality" and canoodles with men, but his queerness is cured through sex with a woman.  Ugh.  Jonathan (sigh) plays a minor character.



The 100 (2016-2017), a tv series about 100 teenagers sent down to an Apocalypse-raged earth from their space-station home to..um...get into arguments.  Jonathan (sigh) plays Bryan in a 10-episode story arc.  He has a romantic relationship with Bryan, and then the show Buries its Gays.

A.R.C.H.I.E. (2016).  Cool title for someone about to be immersed into the Archie universe. It's about a robot dog who bonds with a sad girl.  Jonathan (sigh) plays her crush.

Guest spots:
Hercules in a 2016 episode of Once Upon a Time.

A mutant in a 2016 episode of The X-Files.

A fratboy turned zombie in a 2015 episode of IZombie.

And his movie premiere: The Unspoken (2015).  The close-knit Anderson family vanishes.  17 years later, a single mother moves in to their haunted house. Spoiler alert: the Andersons aren't really gone.  I can't find a plot synopsis, but the reviews are horrible.  Jonathan plays the teenage son.

Two gay characters amid a lot of heterosexist and even homophobic venues.  Not a great record, but Jonathan (sigh) has only been working for five years.  Give him time.