How Proposition 8 nearly canceled tonight's same-sex wedding on "Privileged"

Allan Louis and David Monahan 

It’s a gay old affair on tonight’s episode of the CW series Privileged when gay characters Marco (Allan Louis) and Keith (David Monahan) are married in the season finale of the freshman series.

Creator and Executive Producer Rina Mimoun recently told AfterElton.com how the storyline was unfortunately sidetracked last November, and how gay-fave comic Kathy Griffin came to be involved in the big walk down the aisle:

I had no idea that Prop 8 would ever go this way so the whole time we were planning the story we were like, "We’ll do the wedding in LA, which will be great because we can make it a location shoot here…" We were so convinced that NO on 8 would be NO, we were breaking the story as if it were a done deal. And then when it came back I was like "Oh my God, not only does this suck but what are we going to do for Marco and Keith’s wedding?" The whole thing threw me [and] it became a topic of conversation. I really wanted to deal with the issue. And, in a way, teenagers these days look at things differently…it’s a whole different world now. It’s even different than what we did on Everwood [where Mimoun also served as Executive Producer]. Kids are much savvier.

And what better guest star could producers find for this episode than comedian Kathy Griffin? Asked if Griffin was appearing as herself, Mimoun explained, “She is playing a character named Olivia, the wedding coordinator for Marco and Keith. She’s freakin’ funny.”

Having Griffin on the show helped make the gay wedding reach higher heights. “It was such a perfect scenario because we have our wedding,” Mimoun gushed, “and Kathy Griffin, who has very strong ties to the gay community, seemed like the perfect person to play the wedding coordinator.”

Kathy Griffin and JoAnna Garcia

Mimoun also said that Griffin and series star Joanna Garcia became fast friends, too. “When Kathy Griffin came on the show for the finale, Jo lit up. She was having so much fun and was just in ad-lib heaven. The two of them were going back and forth and it was really fun to see.”

Unfortunately, Mimoun confirmed that, provided the series gets renewed for year two, former Lipstick Jungle hunk Robert Buckley, who recently joined the series, will be getting entangled with Garcia’s character, Megan. Oh, well, there’s always wishful thinking that Buckley will at least keep his shirt off as often as possible.

Tonight’s episode of Privileged airs at 9/8c on the CW network.