Let me tell you something that I read about this man that broke my heart for him and opened my eyes today. I read this in an old magazine interview with Bradley:
Q: What has four years of swords and sorcery taught you?
Bradley: Horse riding, sword fighting, how to sign my name at the speed of light. I used to take a lot of time over the signature and and write a little message when asked for my autograph. Now I get out of there as quickly as possible. Otherwise they smell fresh meat and suddenly come at you from all sides. It's like that zombie film, 28 days later."
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It doesn't often occur to us that a traditionally masculine, cisgender, white, heteronormative man like Bradley who, for what it's worth has a lot of things going for him, could ever feel reduced to a piece of "fresh meat." We usually associate feeling like a piece of meat with being a woman, prey at the mercy of the predatory broken masculine. The next group we more commonly associate with this feeling is any other openly marginalized minority, and yet Bradley has felt like a "piece of meat" despite being a majority ideal.
I feel Bradley's pain palpably here. It's real. I've seen how some fangirls interacted with him. They badgered him and taunted him with ridiculous requests and demands coated in artificial sweetness. One example was a female fan asked him to "blow a kiss" to her friend for her birthday, some girl he'd never met, while being recorded on video. It seemed innocent enough, but it made him uncomfortable and he declined, recoiled even. It was as if he felt used, treated like a performing monkey or an animal at a zoo. Although another guy might have taken that stuff in stride or even enjoyed it, that doesn't detract from how Bradley felt. By the later seasons he was not the carefree guy we saw in the Season 1 cast diaries. Increasingly at promotional events for Merlin, he was much more guarded and moody.
Sometimes I compare how directly cruelly some of the same fangirls treated Angel while coveting and fawning over Bradley simultaneously, as if he was theirs to "protect" from Angel putting a wrench in the heteronormative pairing ideal. Although their demeaning behavior toward Angel was very direct and concrete, they also demeaned Bradley in an whole different but parallel way that was very indirect and non-concrete. Their "love" for him was not out of true respect for him but born from their own brokenness and desire to use him to get their own needs met. And I know he felt that. Bradley is far more empathic and sensitive than he lets on. He guards himself carefully with the jokes and sarcasm.
Bradley and Angel have a soul bond that transcends any romantic involvement between them. He absorbed what was directed at her as if he was her and she him because they are one and the same. He became increasingly disillusioned by the fandom and increasingly sensitive to their attempts to mold him into something inauthentic to fit their fantasies. (By the way, I do believe the fans I'm speaking of are in the minority, but they were enough to be influential.) Behind all of Bradley's snarky banter, there's something so very authentic about him.
