Exclusive: Bryan Fuller reveals the gay "Pushing Daisies" character, steals our hearts

Stuff you should know about Bryan Fuller: He hates Queer as Folk. He has “a huge lesbian agenda”. His beautifully written, eye-popping pilot for ABC’s Pushing Daisies was named one of the 10 best television broadcasts of 2007 by The Washington Post.

And – boys – he’s totally adorable. Like clean puppies and chocolate birthday cake adorable. Noon on your favorite beach in June with a fistful of nostalgia-laden boardwalk cuisine adorable. Freshly cut Christmas tree, decorated in candy canes and red ribbons with a cute miniature train running through a cute miniature town underneath adorable.

And did we mention – he’s crazy talented. Fuller spoke to us for part two of our special investigative report: "Gays in Primetime", but there just wasn’t enough room for all the wonderfulness that is ... Bryan. So here are more tidbits from our interview. Topics include the gay Star Trek script that never got made, the de-gayed gay dad on Dead Like Me, the big gay character-driven show Fuller dreams of doing, and - *EXCLUSIVE* - his big reveal on the identity of Pushing Daisies’ gay character.

Click on through the jump for the gay spoiler and lots more Fuller!

“It’s the coroner,” Fuller told AfterElton.com, referring to the character played by Sy Richardson. “We were going to slowly expand his character and kind of reveal that he has a little crush on Emerson,” the private investigator and business partner to the show’s lead, played by Lee Pace.

“I didn’t want to just do another, like, pretty gay person,” said Fuller. “I thought it would be interesting to have an older character be gay.”

Fuller said he puts up a mental “orange cone” when it comes to gay and lesbian characters that have already been explored. It’s one of the reasons he wasn’t so excited about a “gay” script that was rattling around for Star Trek: Voyager when he was part of that show.

“There was a pregnant ensign – Ensign Wildman – and she was going to have gay godparents to her child,” said Fuller, explaining the show’s potential plotline - that never got made. But Fuller found the characters so two-dimensional that he wasn’t disappointed it didn’t air: “It sounds weird to say – but I was kind of glad they didn’t do it the way it was written. Because it became really cliché.”

In our main page article, Fuller talks about some of the gay characters he’s tried to bring to tv. On the first show Fuller created – Showtimes’s Dead Like Me - the gay character was one that never made it out of the starting gate.

The cast of the late, great Dead Like Me

Fuller said one of the central leads on the show, Georgie “George” Lass, initially had a father that “was written as gay. He was gay in the pilot, there were even inferences about it.” George was one of the dead people – referred to in the show’s title - and the fact that her father was gay, Fuller said “made her life even more valuable. Because here she was the daughter of a guy who wasn’t supposed to breed, biologically speaking.”

But even though the character arc had been planned and there was a whole episode worked out where George would find out about her dad’s sexuality - when Fuller left the show to make the Fox series Wonderfalls, the creators he left behind made the character straight. “And it was heartbreaking to me,” admits Fuller, saying he thinks it was possibly straight guys “who just didn’t want to tell that story.”

In our article, Fuller’s knee-jerk reaction to the idea of a mainly gay character cast was that only the gays would watch. But he says that response may be fueled by his own distaste for the prime model for such a show – Queer as Folk. Fuller eventually acknowledged that “You can’t say America’s not ready for (a mainly gay character cast), because part of America is.” In fact, Fuller hopes he’s the guy to make that show:

“There’s actually a pilot that I would love to write that is primarily gay characters. … It’s a pet project of mine,” said Fuller, an idea he thinks “would be hysterical, that is comedic and dramatic.” Fuller said he’d like to do it on cable, “to really take advantage of the adult content and the adult comedy of the situations that gays find themselves in.”

For "Gays in Primetime", Fuller gave one of the most thoughtful and generous interviews. And for the record: The guy could not be nicer. We’re officially smitten. Hugs Bry-bry. Now here’s a Youtube clip of Bryan talking about Pushing Daisies: