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Beyond the Gay Role
Posted by Jim Halterman on March 4, 2009
Given the fact that Sean Penn just nabbed an Oscar for playing gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk, surely there is still no stigma attached to playing gay, right?
That’s an easy assumption for many viewers – gay and straight – to make, but what do the men who play these roles believe?
AfterElton.com talked with a number of actors who have played gay roles past and present for their thoughts. Do they think playing a gay role can help, hurt or have no real effect on their careers? How has that changed over the years? What do their peers think? And have we finally moved beyond the stigma a gay role once carried?
Their answers might surprise you.
Surprising reaction to gay role on “Raising The Bar.”
On TNT’s hit legal drama,
Raising the Bar, Jonathan Scarfe plays Charlie Sagansky, a law clerk working for a powerful female judge (played by Jane Kaczmarek) with whom he has sex, in part to keep his legal career on track. What makes this plot point run even deeper is that Charlie is a deeply closeted gay man, fearful the revelation about his sexuality would permanently stall his political aspirations.
In talking with Scarfe about taking on the role of Charlie, the straight actor said, “The sexuality of the character didn’t matter to me at all. It wasn’t the most interesting thing about the part. Usually when you get hired on a TV series, you’re getting hired to be a cool version of yourself. Charlie was so different from me. … I’m a guy who can’t keep my mouth shut and I don’t hide anything. [Charlie’s] the opposite of me in that way and that’s intriguing.”
Part of the reality in taking on a gay role for any actor is dealing with the reaction of acting peers as well as agents and managers. Asked if his agent had any hesitation about his taking a gay role in a highly publicized Steven Bochco drama, Scarfe laughed and said, “My agent is gay so he thought it was awesome.”
The actor added, however, that many of his actor friends did not possess the same enthusiasm and, instead, many of them are fearful about playing gay roles.
Scarfe owned up to initially not understanding where the fear of his friends came from. “When you’re a guy like me, you’re just an actor trying to play a role whether it’s Jesus, a gay role or Custer. I’m just being an actor. … I can only see it as a positive when people respond to your playing a role, gay or straight. [However], a lot of friends I have who are gay and actors would shy away from [the part of Charlie Sagansky] because they’re uncomfortable with being fully out publicly. I’ve always said ‘You’re crazy! It’s 2008. It’s Hollywood! Nobody gives a shit!’
”
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Scarfe (left) with Raising the Bar castmates
Jane Kaczmarek and Mark-Paul Gosselaar |
However, after shooting the first season and playing Charlie, Scarfe said he unexpectedly gained insight into his friends’ apprehension when he received some on-set ribbing from members of the
Raising the Bar crew.
“It was shocking to me,” he said. “The number of gay jokes I got in a day just because I’m playing a gay guy. Nobody was being malicious or mean in any way, but that’s the sort of natural reflex. It made me go back to my good friend who I’ve argued with for ages on this subject, telling him ‘you can’t hide this’ and ‘it’s bullshit’ and, instead, I had to tell him that I finally got what he’d been saying.”
Scarfe also mentioned another issue facing successful actors: how being on a long-running series can impact the way in which an actor is perceived by audiences and the Hollywood community, whether the role is gay or straight.
Scarfe cited Eric McCormack, who played Will Truman on
Will & Grace for eight successful seasons as an example. “I’d argue that Eric is suffering not for playing a gay role but a role on a long-running sitcom.”
“I’m very proud of Will,” says Eric McCormack.
Though it may not seem as though McCormack is struggling, as Scarfe implied, McCormack, promoting his new TNT drama,
Trust Me, voiced little worry to AfterElton.com that his long association with the gay character of Will would keep audiences from seeing him as any other character.
“When I started to shop around again and meet with some of the people at the networks to see what the next step might be, they weren’t presenting sitcoms to me and they weren’t presenting gay roles. There was a lot of leading man roles so I think I managed to play that role [of Will] and still circumvent that. I certainly hope so.”
No matter how audiences respond to McCormack playing a straight, married-with-children ad man on his new series, the actor has no regrets about the role that made him famous.
“I’m very proud of Will and that show but I think people know that that was a role I was playing and hopefully give me a chance to be [
Trust Me’s] Mason,” McCormack said. He then added, “I guess we’ll find out.”
Trust Me premiered with ratings lower than expected and, in regards to the ratings for its second episode
, Variety reported a 65% drop in viewers from its lead-in, the popular Kyra Sedgwick series,
The Closer. It has continued to struggle in the ratings since.
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| Tom Cavanagh (left) with McCormack in Trust Me |
(AfterElton.com put in a request to interview McCormack’s
Will & Grace co-star Sean Hayes for this article but Hayes’s representatives said he was unavailable.)
Bill Brochtrup not blue about being gay on NYPD Blue.
While McCormack’s Will Truman role lasted eight years, Bill Brochtrup played the role of openly gay receptionist John Irvin for ten years on ABC’s gritty police drama
NYPD Blue.
The year was 1993 and what was supposed to be a two-episode role highlighting the homophobic side of gruff Detective Andy Sipowicz (played by multiple Emmy-winner Dennis Franz), turned into a ten-year run on the acclaimed series. Brochtrup pointed out that this happened at a time when gay characters were only just beginning to take on more prominent and visible roles on television shows such as
Roseanne,
My So Called Life and
Melrose Place.
Brochtrup compared his role of John with another gay role that was gaining much attention at the time – Doug Savant’s gay role of Matt Fielding on
Melrose Place.
The two roles, Brochtrup said, were quite different in how they were used on the show but they were equally important in breaking ground for how gay roles were portrayed on television. “[Savant] never played that part as a joke and fought all the time to have that character have the same kind of romantic ups and downs as everyone else on the show. He fought very hard for that.”
NYPD Blue may not have explored John’s romantic relationships as
Melrose Place did but it broke new ground with another kind of relationship. Working closely in the police station with the gruff, homophobic Detective Sipowicz, Brochtrup said, “We were able to show, I think, the kind of relationship we hadn’t seen or even not quite still seen in this detail with a gay character who impacts a [straight] guy at the workplace.”
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| The cast of NYPD Blue |
Brochtrup added that over the course of ten years, the relationship between the two characters deepened. “The end of the first season, I shook [Sipowicz’s] hand, which was a very big deal for him. A couple of seasons later, he stood up for me when somebody made a homophobic comment. … A couple of seasons later, I was babysitting his son and the last season I officiated at his wedding so there was a huge deal for that character to go.”
Brochtrup admitted to believing that typecasting does happen when playing any role that last as long as his character did on
NYPD Blue. “I think it may contribute to people thinking you don’t have the versatility that you have [as an actor]. I think being on a long-running television series, you get typecast no matter what the role is. Before
NYPD Blue, Dennis Franz played tons and tons of cop roles on shows. People want to typecast you into something if you’ve been on a show for a long time. I don’t know if you can say this is because it was a gay character or because I’m gay myself. I think it’s more about being on a television show for a large amount of time.”
Despite the typecasting of playing a long-running role, Brochtrup shared his thoughts on gay roles having a sense of legacy to them. “Guys who came generations before me made it easier for me and I hope now there are guys in their 20s who think it’s not even a big deal to play a gay role.”
That said, the actor admitted, “I don’t necessarily see that happening as often as I’d like, to tell the truth. Because every time there is a character who is gay on television and film, the actors talk about what a challenge it was and how brave they had to be … I think it’s still an issue but less of an issue than it was.”
Finally, Brochtrup commented on one popular genre on television that is making bigger strides with featuring gays – reality shows. “They include gay characters from every different walk of life,” he said. “Lesbians, gay. On every show they’re just part of the mix.
Survivor.
The Amazing Race. All the Home and Garden television shows. It’s the gay couple next door and nobody really makes a comment about it. And I think in a funny way it’s those shows are the most advanced as far as that goes. They show the full circle of gay life. They show the little femme-y guys and the big hulky guys and the bodybuilding guys … every kind of person. And then on MTV with
Road Rules and
The Real World there’s always the gay guy and [he is] just one of the bunch. I think scripted television needs to be like that more.”
“…I have to work a little harder,” says Wilson Cruz.
For Wilson Cruz, playing gay roles is something he’s been doing since he first burst on to the television scene in 1994 with his portrayal of Rickie Vasquez on ABC’s
My So-Called Life. Cruz most recently appeared in a recurring role on
Raising the Bar as a potential love interest of Scarfe’s closeted character.
Having played gay roles on these two shows as well as on the series
Noah’s Arc and the recently released,
He’s Just Not That Into You, Cruz has a lot of insight as to how his career has been shaped due to the gay roles.
“I don’t feel like I’ve been limited,” he said. “But I do feel I have to work a little harder. The roles that have been interesting to me have been roles that I have played. There have been some times when there have been roles I didn’t get … I don’t necessarily think it was because I’m gay. There was one role in particular that was a gay role that I didn’t get because I was too old. That hurt more than anything.”
Cruz in My So Called Life (left), and
more recently in He's Just Not That Into You |
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Asked about what he’s seeing in the Hollywood community regarding actors taking gay roles, Cruz said, “I don’t hear so much from people that they’re worried about taking a gay role. What I hear more than anything is gay actors who are just afraid to come out.”
Often contacted via his profile pages on social networks such as Facebook and asked advice on coming out or staying in the closet, Cruz said he has a method for advising those who reach out to him.
“It’s such a personal decision to come out … I have them ask themselves a series of questions that will hopefully come to a personal decision. I feel for them. I understand it. This industry is so much about perception that it’s not so much about its own homophobia. It’s really more about the fear of being limited in any way in their creativity.”
Cruz also talked about Sean Hayes, another
Will & Grace alum who saw his career take off while playing the popular supporting role of Jack McFarland. Though Hayes has worked steadily since the series went off the air, nothing has been as high profile as that breakout role
“As far as Sean Hayes is concerned,” Cruz said. “I think that’s by choice on his part. I think he’s doing more behind the scenes and producing and that kind of thing.”
Christian Vincent jumps the stigma.
While Logo’s television series
Noah’s Arc is enjoying a successful run with its latest incarnation as the movie
Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom, Christian Vincent, who plays Ricky in both projects, offered his take on playing gay roles.
“From my experience with
Noah’s Arc,” he said
, “there were a lot of people who would not audition and agents who didn’t recommend their clients for the show. I’ve had agents who didn’t want me to continue with the show. That’s the truth of the matter. I’m not going to say that it has been easy, but I wouldn’t change anything.”
Vincent believes different roles have different impacts. “It all depends on what the project is. If it is an A-list show or film, I believe the impact it has is less negative as opposed to if it’s not such a well-known venue or as big of a film or television network. It’s a catch-22. … I won’t lie to you and say there aren’t negative effects to it. … I’m not going to pretend there isn’t a stigma attached because there still is.”
As for his acting career beyond his gay role as Ricky, Vincent admitted that he’s had more success with obtaining roles on the other side of the United States’ northern border. “In all honesty, I audition more in Canada … because I have been on a series here [and] I think the casting out there has been more creative and I’ve gotten more roles.”
Having landed roles on successful series such as the CW’s
Smallville and ABC Family’s
Fallen, both of which are shot in Canada, Vincent said, “I have found that in Canada [playing gay] has not been a problem and it’s just been about what you can do and what you can bring to the table.”
Vincent (far right) with his Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom castmates |
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There is still much frustration for Vincent, who believes the gay-role stigma is alive and well in Hollywood. However, he was equally hopeful that the stigma will continue to disappear thanks in part to the recent Presidential election race. Interviewed before Barack Obama’s election to the U.S. presidency, he said, “The way the country is going right now, you have two females who had the possibility of being in a major office and now a man of color in the main office. It’s not the status quo. If people continue to overcome these stigmas, it will continue to change the world.”
Vincent did add that if fear exists in taking a gay role and subsequently having some residual effect, it’s inevitably up to each individual actor to be as fearless as possible.
“As an actor, I want to act and if it’s a good role, I’m going to do it. As far as fear of whether I get another role, that’s up to me. There may be casting directors and people who, because of my role on
Noah’s Arc, may not want to see me. There are others that will, [and] if there are negative ramifications, I feel that my belief in what I can do will overcome whatever negativity or stumbling block may be there.”
“Blood”-y good gay roles for Nelsan Ellis.
Before taking the role of Lafayette Reynolds on Alan Ball’s new HBO series,
True Blood, Nelsan Ellis had his share of reservations. “I had concerns because being a black man playing gay characters in Hollywood … there’s a risk of being pigeonholed … there’s a risk of people not being able to see you outside the character which, of course, you don’t really want.”
Before taking the role, Ellis did his share of research on the character of Lafayette Reynolds in the Charlaine Harris books on which the series is based and found that the gay role was one that was miniscule in the books. “I’m glad Alan Ball, who is a genius, has taken liberties because Lafayette in the books is one I would not be interested in playing at all. I was glad that Alan was adamant in making him very different. In the books, he’s not even a minor character. He just comes on the scene, has six or seven words – the description of him is longer than what he says – he’s really, really flamboyant and he wears makeup and he’s in a sex group and gets killed by someone in the sex group. That’s a little too stereotypical and … you seldom get respect playing a role like that.”
| Ellis as True Blood's "Lafayette" |
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Thankfully, Ellis said, there are many more layers to Lafayette and that is what makes him more exciting to play. While
True Blood has been renewed for a second season on HBO, it remains to be seen as to whether Ellis will be a part of it since Lafayette’s life was in limbo at the end of the first season finale.
Playing gay in and out of “The Office.”
When he signed on for the American version of the BBC hit
The Office, Oscar Nunez didn’t know
that his character Oscar Martinez was gay until gossip to that fact circulated around the set.
“Halfway through the first season,” he said, “there was a rumor going around that they were making Oscar gay. And sure enough there was suddenly a script and [executive producer] Greg Daniels came to talk to me and said, ‘We’re thinking of making your character gay.’ But I knew the script was already written so what was I supposed to say?”
Nunez, who is straight, has no problems with playing a gay character and feels fortunate to be a part of such a successful series. “It’s a great show and a great place to be. People know who you are around town.”
In fact, he said, “regarding the gay thing, nobody seems to have an issue with it. Kids even come up to me and Oscar’s sexuality doesn’t really come up at all.”
As for future roles outside of
The Office, Nunez has already tackled a role that is very different from Oscar Martinez but, ironically, is also a gay character.
Halfway Home was a sitcom that aired ten episodes last year on Comedy Central. The series focused on a rehabilitative halfway house and the eclectic group seeking treatment there including the very out Eulogio Pla.
| Nunez in Halfway Home (left) and The Office (right) |
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While
The Office’s Oscar Martinez is wound a bit too tight and often is the butt of jokes made by Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott, this other gay character was very different. Eulogi, Nunez explained, “happened to be a male prostitute who had delusions of grandeur. He was older but thought he was hot but he’s not.”
