Gays of our Lives (March 30, 2009)

AE: Do you feel your coming out has affected the types of roles that you'll be able to get?
DG: It may, I just don’t know. We will have to wait and see. But I am quite relaxed about it. I always have a plan B. If I don’t find work straight away, I will go home to London and spend more time with my husband. Might do our relationship some good since he is getting fed up commuting between London and Cologne, so there is always an upside.

I did a TV movie last year (Tatort) playing a character that was very different from Roman. The director told me he did not cast me for the film because I was in ATM, but because of my previous work. I think it was meant to be a compliment, but I am quite reluctant to accept compliments as I used to be quite hard on myself. You are your own worst critic! Maybe I will be lucky and some people will remember that I have been a working actor before ATM.

Photo credit: Frank Hempel

AE: Speaking of your husband [Brent Magee, a London based psychotherapist], can you tell me a bit about getting married and what led to your decision to do so?
DG: When I met my husband, he was very clear about what he wanted. At the time I was very impressed by this as I had never met someone who was so clear about what they wanted. He told me from the beginning that he wanted marriage and children. He also said that if I knew exactly what was expected of me, I would have a choice to accept it or move on.

If you would have asked me before I met my husband if marriage was for me, I would have probably said, marriage no. Meaning there is not a person I could think of I would be prepared to give that commitment to. When I met Brent that changed, we were in love, it just felt right and we were finally allowed to get married.

Roman was gay-bashed early in his relationship with Deniz.

AE: You've spoken publicly about being involved in a gay-bashing incident in the past. After being silent before, what led you to start talking openly about it?
DG: I think I had always put it to the back of my mind. I had never really told anyone what had happened, since I was not aware of any support groups or phone help lines at the time. I think this is the main reason why I felt that after the screening of the attack on ATM, we should have a telephone number for the national helpline for victims of hate crimes. Sometimes seeing these things on TV can bring back the distress of the actual event and I felt people should be supported in this. After all, I am not the only person to have been gay bashed and not dealt with it at the time.

AE: What would you like to say to your fans all over the world?
DG: I would like to thank them for all their interest in the storyline and in the character. Also considering that a lot of my fans don’t even understand German, somehow they have still managed to follow the storyline. I think this has been helped by the fact that so much of the storyline has been translated into English by the fans. People will always find a way when they are generally interested, and this impresses me very much. Thank you all for your interest and I hope we can keep it interesting for you.

STAY WILD!