Revamped Top Gear Supports LGBT+ Community, Paints Brunei Cars Rainbow
June 18, 2019The new iteration of the hit BBC show Top Gear has painted cars they used in an episode in Brunei rainbow, in a show of support for the LGBT+ community.
The show filmed an episode in Brunei, just before the country announced draconian new laws that included the death penalty for those convicted of gay sex. After an international outcry, the Sultan of Brunei later announced that the laws would not be enforced.
We would never have filmed in Brunei had the law been announced beforehand,” said new host Freddie Flintoff to The Guardian.
“Like millions of other people around the world, I utterly condemn Brunei’s actions. No one deserves to be stoned to death, whoever they love. Love is love.
“Even though it has since been claimed that the laws will not be enforced, the threat still stands, and even the threat is an appalling abuse of human rights.
“In the last couple of months we have thought very hard about dropping the film entirely but we shot it before the change in the law, and both the Gurkhas and other Bruneians worked incredibly hard to make it happen. We don’t want all their efforts to be for nothing. So we’ve decided to go ahead and show it [and] we’ve given the cars a little makeover.”
The episode follows Flintoff as he and Gurkha soldiers race two rare cars across Borneo to the Sultan of Brunei’s palace.
Those two cars were later spray painted rainbow and displayed at the end of the episode in a show of support for LGBT+ people.
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