Gays of our Lives (February 09, 2009)

CHATTING WITH ... ARGIRIS KARRAS

Degrassi: The Next Generation has a long history of prominent gay characters and this season is no exception. Earlier this year we met Riley Stavros, a teenager struggling with his sexuality, unable to accept that he is gay. With an episode featuring Riley set to air this week on The N, we decided to chat via e-mail with Argiris Karras, who plays the troubled young man, to get his thoughts on his role.

Argiris Karras

AfterElton.com: Tell us something about yourself. How old are you? Where are you from? What do you do for fun? What kind of music do you listen to?
Argiris Karras: I'm 19 years old and I was born in Toronto, Ontario, one of the greatest cities around!

For fun I often chill with my friends and do a whole bunch of random things such as play soccer and video games, watch movies and listen to music. I listen to mainly 80’s music or 80’s influenced music such as Depeche Mode, New Order, The Smiths, U2, and The Killers. I actually enjoy a lot of different genres including hip-hop, hard house, drum and bass, hard rock. It all depends on my mood really. As long as it's not painful to my ears, I'll appreciate it!

AE: How did you become interested in acting? Is this your first major role or have you done other things as well?
AK: I've been an avid movie watcher since I was a young kid. I was always into the heroic action movies such as Die Hard, Blood Sport and Rocky. I've never considered acting because as a kid I was lazy and had the shortest attention span. However, my life always did revolve around the arts. During junior high and high school I loved painting, sculpting, printmaking and just leisurely drawing in my sketchbook.

Then it was in grade 10 when I took my first dramatic arts course that I started realizing how much I loved acting and how good I was at it. Through a lot of moral support and encouragement from teachers, I ended up dropping my other artistic endeavors for acting and started participating in many short student films. Degrassi was my first legitimate audition I've ever had. I don't know if it was fate, timing or luck, but I ended up landing the part of Riley!

AE: Were you a fan of Degrassi?
AK: I wish I can say I was . . . but truthfully I never really knew about the show when I was younger and I was never interested in dramatic shows when I was younger. I had a wild imagination and I always wanted to feed my need for fantasy. So I used to watch Pokemon, Digimon, Dragonball Z and Mythbusters. But I can clearly say I am now a fan as I see myself relating to Degrassi more than any other show I know.

AE: Tell me a bit about your character. What kind of guy is Riley?
AK: Riley is the sort of guy in high school who you would look at and never suspect to be gay because he puts up this tough, macho outer-shell. He's struggling with his sexuality and does not want to face the fact that he is gay. He's extremely competitive and loves sports. Underneath his masquerade of heterosexuality lies a love-deprived and testosterone-raging teenager who is just like any other kid. He's a character with many facets and just wants to figure himself out and finally be free from his burden, which is his denial, not his sexuality.

AE: Riley seems truly haunted by being gay. Where does his conflict about his sexuality come from?
AK: His conflict about his sexuality arises mainly from his reputation as the football-playing macho man, which is the opposite of what his character really is internally.