Stephen Fry shares secret to making his relationship work despite large age gap

Actor and writer Stephen Fry has opened up about being in a relationship with a large age gap.

The Blackadder and Red, White & Royal Blue star, 67, is married to comedian and writer Elliott Spencer, who is 30 years his junior at 38-years-old.

Stephen Fry and Elliott Spencer married in a ceremony in Norfolk, England, in January 2015, after meeting in 2012.

Speaking to TV icon Rylan Clark on his new podcast Rylan: How to Be in Love, Fry said that “cheerfulness” had become the key to success in his relationship with Spencer.

“I can tell you how to have a successful relationship with Elliott, but that’s probably not very helpful. But I guess it’s all the normal human virtues – some of which are forgotten virtues – but one of the most important human virtues, I think, isn’t even really considered a virtue,” he explained.

“But it is one that changes the world. And it’s not kindness, which obviously is important, but it’s a subset of kindness, perhaps. And it’s cheerfulness.”

Fry went onto explain that Spencer had to learn to cope with him being “extremely energetic and bouncy and chatty in the mornings”, which Spencer is not.

“I had to find ways of just calming myself and he had to come up a little bit and not be quite so kind of, ‘will you shut up Stephen’!”

The author also shared that being in a relationship with a sizeable age gap means that he can be taught about things he wouldn’t otherwise have come across.

“… He introduced me to Kendrick Lamar which was a great thing to do because Kendrick Lamar I’ve decided is a great poetical spirit, a really remarkable figure,” Fry said.

Spencer also introduced Fry to the world of WWE, with the comedy giant admitting he recently purchased tickets for WrestleMania in Las Vegas.

Elsewhere in his lengthy chat with Rylan, Fry got candid about his experience of a sixteen-year, self-imposed period of celibacy. 

Between 1979 and 1995, Fry explained that “sex and love were the last things” he wanted.

“Sex in particular, because, as it so happened, by cruel twist of fate, the year I left university and went to live in London and make my fortune, as it were, was 1981, and that was the same year what we didn’t know was a virus arrived in London too, HIV,” he explained.

Fry said that the “enormous stigma” and “terrible headlines” about the AIDS crisis made him fearful of the “danger” of having sex as a gay man.

“I was going to funerals. I started to go to funerals of friends, friends from university. And it was just heartbreaking. So that plus work meant but I just didn’t have a partner or sex for nearly 15 years.”

He has previously revealed that he was once known as “Celibate Stephen”.

The actor, who will soon feature on BBC series The Celebrity Traitors, came out publicly as gay in the 1980s, and has since become one of Britain’s most notable gay figures.

In recent years, Fry has drawn criticism from some members of the LGBTQ+ community for branding LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall as “shameful and sad” and refusing to condemn JK Rowling’s views on the transgender community.

Fry said in an interview in 2024 that he had “no interest in supporting [Stonewall’s] current wave of nonsensical [policies]”.

Stonewall was founded in 1989 by activists including Ian McKellen, Lisa Power, and Michael Cashman to campaign against Section 28.

It was named after the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969, and has advocated for various milestones in queer rights, including repealing Section 28, putting an end to the ban on LGBTQ+ people in the armed forces and marriage equality.

In recent years, it has been at the forefront of defending the transgender community from an onslaught of political attacks.

Rylan: How to Be in Love is streaming on BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer.

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