Gays in Primetime -- A Special Investigative Report: Part II

Pushing Daisies’ Fuller was a writer on the show at the time, and said that when the script went out where the character revealed his sexual orientation, and the actor “saw the line of dialogue … it was a shock to the actor and his management.” Ultimately, Kring explained, “the actor wasn’t comfortable with [playing the part as gay], and I wasn’t comfortable being the one to ask the actor to play something he wasn’t comfortable with.” Thus the end of “gay” Zach.

Fuller believes Dekker balked out of fear of being too closely identified with the character’s sexuality, interpreting his reaction as “I don’t want to play another gay character because I’ve played a few in the past.” In a statement on his MySpace page, Dekker insisted he had no problems playing a gay character and the issue here was an artistic one, as he had already conceived the character as straight with a crush on Claire. Numerous calls to Dekker’s management for this article were unreturned.

Beyond the world of the wacky neighbor

Barclay believes the current challenge is not just getting GLBT characters on the air, but having GLBT characters represented “in their complete three-dimensional humanity.” Or as Mutchnick puts it, “the gay character is living dangerously in the world of the wacky neighbor.”

Many of the creators found under-developed gay characters more offensive than none at all, variously referring to them as “window dressing” and giving the appearance that a mere “quota is being addressed.” Kring described these poorly drawn GLBT characters, untethered from the action, as nothing more than “free-floating character(s), inserted just to fulfill your own liberal bias.”

Mutchnick diagnosed the problem with gay characters simply: “People don’t write them well.”

“Groundless stereotyping” is one trap Mutchnick sees gay characters fall prey to, acknowledging the indictment “is rich coming from the mouth that created Jack McFarland.” Jack, from Will & Grace, has been dismissed by many as just such a stereotype, but Mutchnick disagrees, saying the character “had a fully fleshed out life that existed. He wasn’t just a flaming homo. He had family and friends and values and lack of values.”

Straight creator Lawrence mined his own life for his GLAAD award-winning Spin City character, Carter Heywood, basing it on his own best friend – out gay producer Randall Winston. Lawrence said they ultimately “found” Carter through his flaws and the relationships he developed with the other characters on the show.

Michael Boatman as "Carter Heywood" (left) &
character inspiration, Randall Winston

Baitz as well described his character Kevin Walker’s flaws and “fear of commitment” as one of the things that made it most “real and interesting.” And he too used relationships to develop the character, having the archetypes for many of Kevin’s various love interests in mind while creating the series’ arc.

Another current example, Justin, the showtune-loving, fashion obsessed nephew to Ugly Betty, is a character that plays into stereotypes, but succeeds because of built-in conflict with the traditional, Latino immigrant world around him.

A recent episode found Justin running with an uncharacteristically rough crowd - eventually confessing to his mother the core issue: his fear that, because of his less traditionally male interests, he is not the son his recently passed father would have wanted. It’s an honest, complex conflict that fits into the larger storylines of the show.

Ugly Betty creator, Silvio Horta, said the rich diversity in his show was not a choice, but in his “creative DNA,” explaining: “Look, I’m Latino, I’m gay. I write about these things because I live them and I know them.” And Horta said when it came to the character of Justin, there was no plan: “It really just popped into my head. … I tried five different types of kids, and they all felt the same. Then suddenly, I thought – What if you had a little gay kid? I wrote him that way, and it was like: This is fun! This is interesting and different.”

Ugly Betty's "Justin" (Mark Indelicato) (left) & Silvio Horta

Like many of these successful gay characters, there’s no agenda. No self-censoring. It’s drawn from life experience. The character has conflict built into the fabric of the show. And there’s an enormous talent behind it all.

Executives: Mixed Messages and a Guessing Game

Ultimately, the buck stops with the executives who are the final authority behind the scenes. And the current entertainment heads we spoke with in Part One said part of why there are so few GLBT characters is that writers aren’t writing them.

If true, this may be in part because writers, trying to get a show on the air, are attempting to anticipate what the networks might accept – or reject. It’s a guessing game that makes writers’ assumptions about executive attitudes toward GLBT characters as important as the reality of those attitudes.

When told that network executives said they want GLBT characters on their air – Lawrence replied, “I believe that’s how they feel – to a point.” One Tree Hill’s Mark Schwahn initially declared, “I don’t think executives blink at gay, lesbian and bisexual characters,” then wonders if his show’s supporting bisexual character, Anna Taggaro, had instead been a lead male character exploring homosexuality, would he have ever gotten the go-ahead. Kring said that though he has never personally seen gay characters vetoed by executives, he still believes that all things being equal, a prominent gay character “could be a tipping point” between keeping a show in development and becoming a show on the air.

As Fuller put it: “There is a mixed message being sent to writers as to how willing and open people are to having these characters on their airwaves.”