“I’d love bullies to ask for forgiveness.” Luke Evans talks to Jamie Laing about his first crush and growing up gay in Wales

Speaking with reality TV star Jamie Laing, gay Welsh actor Luke Evans recalled his first ever crush and how he wants childhood bullies to apologise for being “horribly intolerant, evil little bastards”.

In his best-selling memoir, Boy from the Valleys: An Unexpected Journey, the actor recalled being bullied before he even knew what it meant.

Insults such as “shirt lifter” left him in a very dark place, he wrote, “knowing you’re somehow ‘wrong’, but with no idea why that is or how you can fix it.”

He added that he “hated school. Children can be horribly intolerant, evil little b**tards some of them. Anything slightly different about you and you’re a target – and I was different in almost every way possible.”

Speaking on Laing’s podcast Great Company, the 45-year-old hunk opened up about being bullied, as well as acknowledging his first crush.

Evans said insults left him feeling “dirty” and “like [he] had a disease.” They left him feeling more isolated, but added that he “knew there was more” beyond school, which kept him going.

Asked if he would forgive his tormentors, Evans said he would. “Yes, I guess I forgive them,” he said. “I’d love for them to ask for it though. On their knees, ‘Please, please forgive me.'”

“The ultimate revenge: success,” Laing added.

He also revealed his first gay crush was his rugby teacher, when he was around nine or 10.

“I remember thinking, ‘Holy shit, what is this?'”

“I just felt something I’d never felt before,” he said of the experience.

Evans is currently in a relationship with Fran Tomas, a project manager in construction from Madrid. Evans went public with the relationship in December 2022. In a People magazine story, Evans said: “He’s a great human being.

“He’s the best part of me for sure. He literally makes me a better person. And he has to put up with my shit, which I can’t imagine what that would be like.”