Will Luke and Noah Ever Go All The Way?

Luke (Van Hansis), Noah (Jake Silbermann)

Remember when Luke and Noah kissing on As the World Turns used to be a big deal? They of course shared the first gay male kiss on daytime television back in August of 2007. But after a couple initial smooches, Oakdale’s gay super couple (and fans) had to content themselves with hand holding, longing looks, and even a few infuriating cutaway scenes. Everyone remembers that infamous mistletoe moment from last December. Frustration among gay Nuke fans — and probably even a lot of straight ones — eventually bubbled over and began to be picked up by various mainstream media outlets. That in turn offered ATWT a great deal of free publicity and naturally had a lot of people tuning in to see what the controversy was all about.

After a seven month dry spell, Luke and Noah did indeed start kissing again — without advance warning or fanfare — and since then the couple has kissed a lot. So much so that it hardly registers with viewers any more what a big deal that is. Name any other U.S. daytime soap that shows two men kissing every one or two weeks? You can’t.

The last great frontier for Luke and Noah is of course sex. Four hundred plus days have passed since that first kiss, yet the characters seem no closer to the bedroom than they were at the start. That glaring lack of intimacy seems at odds with reality — not to mention the typical timeline for a soap opera romance. If they had been a straight couple, these two would already be married and divorced by now.

Last week AfterElton.com had the chance to talk by phone with Jean Passanante, head writer for As the World Turns. She wanted to plug the upcoming election storyline involving Luke's first crush, Kevin Davis. But we wanted to find out more about how Luke character was originally conceived, and whether his relationship with Noah so far had played out the way Passanante had hoped. We also wanted some candid explanation for why the couple didn’t kiss for seven months, and perhaps most importantly, we wanted to ask whether Luke and Noah will ever go “all the way.”

As the World Turns head writer, Jean Passanante

Passanante got her start on soaps as a staff writer for One Life to Live. She was there in 1992, the year a young Ryan Phillippe was on OLTL playing Billy Douglas, daytime television’s first gay teen. So one of the first things I ask Passanante is whether that was just a coincidence. Had she been actively involved with that storyline?

“Definitely!” she explains “And it’s funny because at the time there was a discussion about whether to make the gay teen character a part of the main family [the Buchanans], but ultimately it was decided to make Billy a friend of Joey Buchanan’s — not Joey. I think it was a great story, and it was groundbreaking in a lot of ways, but I also think it would have had more impact at that time if it had been somebody in Viki [Buchanan]’s family, or whatever. And so when I rolled over to All My Children a few years later it was a great opportunity to make Bianca come out — because that was a case where she was Erica’s daughter so…”