“I didn’t tell anyone.”
It’s A Sin has become one of the most talked about shows of 2021, mainly due to it’s harrowing depiction of the Aids crisis in the 1980s.
Nathaniel J Hall who plans Donald Bassett on the hit series recently opened up about how he can really relate to his character as he was diagnosed with HIV when he was only 16.
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Hall spoke candidly about his diagnosis and how for the longest he didn’t tell anyone in his life about it;
“I was diagnosed very, very young.
There was a lot of working through all that shame of being gay and trying to unpick all that homophobia that I’d internalised. And then [came] this other thing, I’d contracted this virus.
I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t tell my family and my friends – I told very few friends – until about 2017.”
During the interview with Sky, Hall went on to say that at first he refused to take the test, believing that it couldn’t possible happen to him;
“When I was offered the test, actually, I refused, because I just thought I couldn’t possibly have caught it.
You know, I’m white, middle class, I was head boy at my school, I was like, it doesn’t happen to people like me, which is obviously a really ridiculous attitude to have because it can happen to anyone.”
The It’s A Sin actor says that the diagnosis came as a shocking blow especially since doctors said it would shorten his life expectancy.
Hall also admitted that at the time he knew very little about HIV and for the longest time was terrified that he would pass it on to others;
“I lived with the thinking that I could pass the virus on. I lived with that fear, always, that I could pass it on to a partner, until about 2016 when the science was showing that I couldn’t pass it on.”
Unlike characters in It’s A Sin, new preventative medications like PrEP mean that HIV cannot be transmitted to someone who is HIV-negative.
When taken correctly PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) has been found to be about 99 per cent effective.
Hall finished the interview by saying that he wishes he could go back and tell his teenage self that it was all going to turn out ok;
“If I go back to when I was 16, 17, going through that diagnosis…
If I could go back to that version of myself, you know… It turns out all right in the end.”
