Jack Innanen addresses queerbaiting accusations over sexually fluid ‘Adults’ character
TORONTO, ONTARIO – SEPTEMBER 12: Jack Innanen of ‘Purgatory’ poses in the Getty Images Portrait Studio presented by IMDb and IMDbPro at InterContinental Toronto Centre on September 12, 2026 in Toronto (Getty Images)
Adults star Jack Innanen has addressed accusations of queerbaiting surrounding his sexually fluid character Paul Baker, arguing that the character’s sexuality is too fundamental to his identity for the role to constitute false queer representation.
In a new interview with Variety, Innanen discussed the response to Paul Baker, who was introduced to FX’s comedy series as a love interest for Issa, played by Amita Rao, before becoming involved in a complicated relationship with Anton, played by Owen Thiele.
Season 2 of Adults, which premiered in late August, follows a group of five friends hanging out in their shared house in Queens. Paul Baker is introduced as the most recent addition to the friend group, with the show leaning into his relentlessly sunny energy as it throws him into messy relationship territory. Paul Baker’s sexuality has been a central part of the show’s second season, with the character portrayed as being attracted to people regardless of gender.
Innanen, who identifies as straight, was asked directly whether he was sensitive to accusations of queerbaiting given that he plays a sexually fluid character.
“I think my understanding is that queerbaiting is when someone is falsely portraying themselves as queer,” he said.
“And Paul Baker is pretty fluid to the core, and I think that that resonated with many people.”
“There wasn’t much queerbait to him”
The question of queerbaiting emerged around the character’s introduction and subsequent storyline, particularly because Paul Baker is a sexually fluid man who is also involved in relationships with women.
Innanen acknowledged that some viewers had questioned the decision to have a bisexual or fluid male character in a heterosexual relationship, saying he was aware of “some critique in the beginning of the bi guy or fluid guy who’s in a heterosexual relationship”.
But he said the show’s love triangle ultimately felt consistent with who Paul Baker was.
“I think that there wasn’t much queerbait to him,” Innanen said.
Rather than presenting his sexuality as a source of angst or as a twist, the series treats Paul’s attraction to different genders as part of his broader personality. His openness and willingness to follow his feelings are also repeatedly used to frustrate the other characters, who struggle to determine whether his warmth towards them is romantic or simply part of his naturally affectionate personality.
Innanen described Paul as someone who is “deeply kind to everyone”, saying that this quality can make it difficult for other characters to work out whether he actually has a crush on them.
Queer roles have long been played by actors of different sexualities, and the question of who gets to portray LGBTQ+ characters has regularly generated debate. Queerbaiting, meanwhile, is generally used to describe situations where queer possibilities or identities are deliberately teased without meaningful representation, rather than simply describing a straight actor playing a queer character.
For Innanen, the distinction is important. He argues that Paul Baker is not pretending to be queer for the audience or teasing a sexuality that the series ultimately refuses to acknowledge. His fluidity is explicitly part of the character and directly informs the relationships and storylines of the second season.
Fans say Paul Baker helped them understand their own sexuality
Innanen also revealed that the response to Paul Baker has gone beyond fan interest in the show’s complicated love triangle. He said viewers have approached him to tell him that watching the character helped them understand their own sexuality.
“I hadn’t experienced it until this season that people were coming up to me and saying that Paul Baker helped them learn about their own sexuality, or that they discovered that they weren’t bi, they were fluid,” he said. A response which Innanen admits has made him more conscious of the responsibility that comes with portraying the character.
“I’ve really felt — not pressure, but that there’s some type of representative responsibility here,” he said. “I was just really glad that it could do that, and that it could be represented so well.”
Paul Baker was originally written differently
Paul Baker was not always intended to be the character viewers now know. Innanen told Variety that the character was originally written as being from Colorado and had more of a “f*ckboy element”. The show’s creators, Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, rewrote Paul as Canadian after casting Innanen, who is from Canada.
According to Innanen, the changes also brought more sweetness to the character.
He said the creators told him that the Canadian aspect helped bring out a quality of kindness, whereas the original version of Paul was more of a player.
That evolution appears to have become important to the character’s second-season storyline, in which his relationships with Issa and Anton become increasingly complicated. Paul is married to Anton while also being romantically involved with Issa, creating a love triangle that the show treats as an extension of his willingness to embrace complicated relationships rather than a conventional coming-out narrative.
Asked where he would like Paul to go next, Innanen said he hoped the character could find some stability with Anton.
“I hope to see a more liberated Paul Baker, and a more stable, in-love Paul Baker,” he said.
Innanen almost appeared in Heated Rivalry
In the interview Innanen also revealed that he had been offered a role in Heated Rivalry, the hit adaptation of Rachel Reid’s hockey romance, but ultimately had to turn it down because of scheduling.
He declined to reveal whether the role would have involved a sex or love scene when asked directly, saying only that he loved and admired everyone involved with the show.
“I don’t know what I can say about any of that,” he said. “But I love everyone involved. It’s a pretty kick-ass crew.”
The actor is now filming the second season of Dan Levy’s Netflix series Big Mistakes, having previously built a substantial social-media following and appeared in Canadian comedy The Office Movers.
