While the romantic pillar of the show was the relationship between Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) and Blackbeard–also known as Edward Teach (Taika Waititi)–they were hardly the only pair to get a romance.
“When I read the pilot, I thought to myself, ‘you know this is pretty gay’, but I never thought the show would go that far,” Ortiz explained to Gizmodo over video chat recently. With a small timeframe and a smaller budget, writer-director David Jenkins created a queer workplace comedy that took a swift detour into a historical high-seas romance, bodice-ripping included. Ortiz wasn’t the queer one, but one of the queers, a part of an expansively queer cast that centered queerness in the storytelling. The thing is though, Our Flag Means Death doesn’t just have one queer character. Their character, Jim (shortened from their last name, Jiminez), is a transgender, nonbinary, Latine person who uses they/them pronouns… just like Ortiz. “I’m used to being the queer one.” Ortiz is speaking about their role in the hit pirate comedy, Our Flag Means Death. “I knew my character was going to be the queer one,” Vico Ortiz said in our interview last week.
