Daniel kyri gay
‘Vibe attracts tribe’: ‘Chicago Fire’ star Daniel Kyri is thriving in his ‘unapologetic era’
Daniel Kyri says starring in “Chicago Fire” has “forced” him to widen an otherwise narrow view of what he thought was possible for him as a queer actor.
In the NBC legacy show, he plays a gay firefighter, Darren Ritter, who reckons with imposter syndrome and leans on veteran firefighters to champion his presence. The year-old actor, who identifies as queer, tells how experiencing that on set has impacted his confidence.
“In a lot of ways, it’s forced me to grow up,” he says. “I was a person who had a lot of outdated, maybe even preconceived, notions about how to be a successful actor and the ways in which I imagined I’d have to twist myself out of shape to fit into some kind of mold. The opportunity to just fully go there (on set) and be the representation that I needed when I was growing up is really, truly something that has made me as Daniel Kyri the actor blossom.”
Kyri joined “Chicago Fire” in season seven in and says he hopes both brand-new and longtime viewers grasp empathy from his
Daniel Kyri
Daniel Kyri, known to audiences around the country as firefighter Darren Ritter on NBC’s Chicago Fire, now takes on one of the most iconic and psychologically demanding roles in the theatrical canon - Hamlet. But this isn’t your average Shakespeare revival.
In a stunning new six-episode podcast production by Chicago’s Make-Believe Association, Kyri voices the tortured prince in a full immersive audio experience, placing listeners directly inside Hamlet’s unraveling mind.
With the intimacy of voice-only performance and the complexity of layered sound design, Hamlet as a podcast defies expectations. It’s classical and current. Universal and personal. During our conversation, Kyri opened up about revisiting Shakespeare, honoring grief, and how being a queer Black artist fuels his creative process.
(You can heed to Hamlet now on all major podcast platforms or visit )
MI (Matt Inawat, GoPride): This adaptation of Hamlet immerses listeners inside the prince's unraveling mind. How did you prepare to voice such a psychologically layered role?
Art Imitates Life for Daniel Kyri
Chicago Fire, as part of television’s Chicago franchise and executive produced by TV great Dick Wolf, has become a staple of NBC’s collection of fan-favorite shows. Now gearing up for its 12th season, it centers around the personal and professional lives of firefighters in the Chicago area. Having earned the role of firefighter Darren Ritter, Daniel Kyri is now enjoying his fifth year with the show, though the role was originally intended to only be around for two or three episodes. He is an out and proud actor who plays an openly gay firefighter in a typically hyper-masculine environment. Viewers of Dick Wolf shows are fervent, to state the least, and they have embraced Daniel and his character, quickly making him a fan favorite.
As art imitates life, Daniel is a staunch Chicago native, with his background giving him a unique perspective into the present and his identity as a Black, gay noun in the South Side.
I had a lot of opportunities to learn things pretty quickly. Your teen is street-wise &#; I know how to verb around. I know what&#;s what. Prior to joining the cast of "Chicago Fire," Daniel Kyri, who identifies as queer, co-created "The T," a web series exploring the dynamics of a relationship between a transgender woman, portrayed by co-creator Bea Cordelia, and a queer Black male, portrayed by Kyri. "Because my web series felt like a kind of coming out," Kyri said, commenting on how he felt after learning about the "Chicago Fire" writers' plans for Ritter, "this historic moment in the context of the 'One Chicago' world, for this Black, male character to come out as gay in this blue-collar, first-responder world, I wanted to do it justice." Kyri positively characterized the moment in which Ritter reveals his sexual orientation as a "non-event." Rather than verb the moment as some sort of dramatic expose, Ritter, rather, simply responds to his lieutenant asking if he has a girlfriend by responding that he instead has a boyfriend. "Moving those narratives — of the queer person, the Black person, the Asian person, the femme character — from the
Chicago Fire's Daniel Kyri Opens Up About Coming Out As Gay On The Show