WATCH: Tony Kushner on Why His Lincoln Isn't Gay

In an interview about his new film Lincoln, gay playwright Tony Kushner says that he believes Abraham Lincoln might have been gay, but decided not to make that an issue in his movie.

BY Sunnivie Brydum

November 15 2012 5:32 PM ET

Legendary gay playwright Tony Kushner told out film critic Tom O'Neil that although he's well-aware of rumors that Abraham Lincoln was gay, he decided not to expound on them in the screenplay for his new film, Lincoln.

Kushner said Lincoln, in which Daniel Day-Lewis plays the Great Emancipator, is about a specific moment in time — a moment that didn't allow much room for sexuality of any sort.

"I don't feel that there was any evidence at this particular moment that Lincoln was having sex with anybody," Kushner told O'Neil. "He seems to have not slept and taken no time off during this period…. I don't say in my movie whether the Lincoln character was gay or straight. You can ask Daniel what he was playing, but it did not seem to me a thing to make a movie about now."

Kushner, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning AIDS retrospective Angels in America, did tell O'Neil that he thinks there's some credence to the rumors that Lincoln was gay or bisexual.

"I personally believe that there is some reason to speculate that Lincoln might have been bisexual or gay," Kushner said.

Watch the video below.