#this has been Wild Projection from BHTR

[bringinghometherain]

I think the whole "I had to drop my phone...and go to Costa Rica for a while" thing is very likely because Rhys has been almost entirely a comedic side character in his work for like, 25 years. He's been earning his living being funny and awkward in front of a camera, which is a different subdivision of Hollywood from being attractive in front of a camera. He probably, as he got older, settled into that identity just fine. He likes being the funny guy, he feels fine about how he looks, he married a lovely woman and therefore didn't need to fixate on his appeal in the way that people who are dating need to (or feel they need to, rather).

Being Funny as an identity (especially for Rhys's generation of comics) often means you have written off the idea of being considered conventionally attractive. Not because you're not attractive! But because you start being funny when you're a kid to get people to like you, because you're kind of weird and awkward and you have bad skin and don't really fit into your body, and nobody will like you unless you have "being funny" to offer to the group.

Being Funny also means you're probably very good at redirecting conversation away from the parts of yourself you don't want people to see, you're very good at self-deprecating jokes, and you probably feel like you need to earn your space in most situations by Being Funny (ask me how I know). And when you're in your late 40s and quite settled into this identity, becoming an overnight sex symbol and having your social media feeds suddenly flooded with incredibly detailed artistic depictions of you as a sex symbol, I would guess that is extremely hard to wrap one's head around!!! It probably feels uncomfortable at first!! If your relationship with your body is "oh that old thing, don't worry it tells jokes," then having dozens of people drawing you as a tasteful nude has gotta be weird! I get it, and I sympathize. If I had something that big happening to my identity I might also go to Costa Rica for a bit (no I would not, I cannot afford that, I would probably go to Lake Michigan for like a day and call it even).

And as for why Taika and Con have been able to embrace the fanart from the start, well. Leslie Jones has already asked the important question of Taika: "Do you know you fine as hell?" And yeah, he absolutely does. And like he says, he knew it in high school too. And I say this because he went into entertainment, he probably wanted this at least a little bit, like come on. He's funny too, obviously, but he's always been hot, and he knows that. He didn't have to fall back on being funny because he was also Fine As Hell. Before OFMD was even an idea he'd already had all these photoshoots of him being a goofball in one shot and a Brooding Romantic Lead type in another. Dude knew his range well before the first sketch of Blackbeard in fishnets dropped. He was always gonna be fine.

And Con! Con has been a romantic interest several times in his tv/film career, from the very start. He's a side character pretty often, but the man has gotten plenty of feedback that he's attractive enough to be a romantic interest on a screen. Hell, just in 2020 he was a romantic lead on a podcast drama (which was a great story, he's great in it, very fun little horror drama). So while he may not have the same Fine As Hell and Knows It energy Taika has, Con probably came into OFMD more sure of his physical attractiveness than of his comedic acting skills. And when the Izzy fanart started dropping, he probably didn't have much trouble getting excited about it after the initial surprise, because he hadn't written off his physical attractiveness in the way Rhys probably had.