Exclusive interview with "Survivor: Gabon"'s Marcus Lehman

Marcus Lehman (All photos courtesy of CBS)

Survivor is no stranger to the gays. The mother of all reality competition shows has even had two openly gay million-dollar winners: Richard Hatch in Season One and Todd Herzog in China. Just when we thought we'd seen it all, however, Survivor surprised us with a sweet hobromance -- a word we coined here at AfterElton.com to describe a close non-sexual friendship between a gay man and a straight man. Think Bronnie from Make Me A Supermodel.

Straight doctor Marcus Lehman and gay lawyer Charlie Herschel had an alliance from day one, but that wasn't all Charlie had. He also had a huge, obvious crush on his straight pal. The kicker was that Marcus was so completely comfortable with Charlie's affections.

Now, we don't want to fawn over the straight boy for being nice to the gay boy, but let's face it: That's not the normal model in our society, especially on television. Marcus was so completely comfortable with Charlie that at one point he even nibbled a piece of fruit off Charlie's shoulder.

After Marcus was blindsided at the last Tribal Council, we wanted to talk to him about his relationship with Charlie and where his enlightened attitude comes from. And is it possible that we haven't seen the last of Marlie?

Find out after the jump!

AfterElton.com: Congratulations on making it to the jury! Any regrets about throwing the idol away?
ML: Honestly no. I mean, you can add that up a thousand different ways and there's no way it would ever add up to me staying for another round. As I've been telling everyone else, there was a one-in-ten chance of me ending up with it in the first place, [and] everyone would have known I had it, and...

AE: You would have been a target.
ML: Yeah. It wouldn't have made sense at all. Really, the reality is I wouldn't have ended up with it, and if it ended up in Sugar's hands, or Matty's, or Crystal, Jenny or Susan's we would have had an even worse situation set up, so... Plus, how funny is it! I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when Jeff heard about it. I know he flipped out and it was hysterical.

AE: I guess it won't come as a big surprise to hear that you have a big gay following. Why do you think that is?
ML: It's always cool to hear that people were excited about the show and me in particular. I guess it's because I became such great friends with Charlie. He's one of my best friends now. It was just such a joy to have met him on the show and had such a fun time with it. I hope that the gay community enjoyed the show and got a little fun out of my incident with the wardrobe malfunction. [Laughs]

AE: I was going to bring that up. How does it feel to know that your bits and pieces have been seen all over TV and the Internet?
ML: Well, I hate to think that my grandmother saw that, but for me I think you just have to shrug it off and laugh. It's pretty funny that I can Google my penis and I'm not a porn star. Who can say that? It's kind of random. Some of the stuff that people have done, putting it to music, I mean, you all are geniuses. I think it's hysterical. You're incredibly creative with such a small piece of, uh, footage.

AE: Good thing you said footage.
ML: [Laughs] Needless to say, I've changed brands of underwear since then. So no more incidents, hopefully.

Charlie Herschel, Marcus and Charlie

AE: How quickly did you realize that Charlie had a crush on you?
ML: Honestly, man, Charlie didn't have a crush on me. We just hit it off right away. There was something about his demeanor and just the way he carried himself, that's what led me to pick him in the [first] place. We just had this great connection which really bore itself out. We have a ton of stuff in common, not all of which we shared on the show. I didn't tell him where I went to college. It was something to keep private. He didn't tell me he was a lawyer. We kind of held those things off, but he's an amazing guy. He's accomplished so much, and he has a great heart, and he's just so trustworthy.

 

Gosh! We just had a great connection. I think for us it was just more about developing a really unique friendship than him chasing after me or me flirting with him. There was no strategy there. We were just best friends out there.

AE: Did you know that you two got the nickname of Marlie on our site?
ML: Oh! The combination of he and I? Awesome! Again, very clever.

AE: You seemed extremely comfortable with the fact that Charlie was smitten by you and even with showing physical affection. I think you won legions of gay fans when, early on, you interviewed that "I don't see any romance between Charlie and I. I think he's a great guy, you know. I can see that he's handsome and smart and all those things. I really can appreciate that about him. It's just not really the way I roll."
ML: Yeah, I commend Charlie at the same time. He had to make certain adjustments. As a gay man, maybe it's possible that he did find me attractive, which would be very flattering and very nice, but knowing I would not be able to return the same affection it takes courage to be able to put yourself in that situation.

I've been in situations where I've been in love with somebody and she would never even give me the time of day. In that case, I can see that to maintain a friendship there are certain boundaries you have to set up, and things that you have to respect. I hope that people can appreciate that by now, my God, you can have a friendship between a gay man and a straight guy. I thought we were beyond that, but obviously with the voting of the recent few days that's not necessarily the case. But it was great, I'm so lucky to have met Charlie.

AE: Where do you come by your attitudes from? Was it the way you were raised or did you have a lot of gay friends?
ML: I'll be honest, no. I grew up in the South which is a wonderful and educated place, but there are definitely some very tough ideas in the kind of place I grew up. Public high school is not the most welcoming place for gay people. We had some people who were courageous enough to be out at that time and it definitely gave me something to think about.

My parents have always been very open-minded. I grew up in a bicultural household and you learned to welcome other cultures and other mindsets. As somebody that would rather choose to love somebody than castigate them for something that I'm sure I could be punished for a hundred times over, it just seems silly. I don't know where that came from. I think it was just a combination of my experiences.

Then I moved to Atlanta which is a very progressive place and has a large gay community. I have a very good friend there who came out a couple years into our friendship. It didn't change him as a person. It just meant we hung out at a couple different places, but why not? I love these people. I love them as friends. Anyone who is my friend I care about whether they're black, white, gay, straight. It's just nuances, something to appreciate about them and something to add to our friendship.

AE: There have been a lot of homophobic remarks on CBS's Survivor forums, with some people saying they think the friendship between you and Charlie is disgusting, and they'd like to punch him in the face. What would you say to someone like that?
ML: I don't say a lot. I don't think you're ever going to reach somebody who's going to make a public fool of themselves that way. They clearly have places to grow, and I think we're all works in progress so why point out the plank in their eye when I have splinters in my own?

It bothers me that Charlie gets the brunt of it. Punch me in the face. I'm half of this relationship and I'm not afraid to stand up for that. How can you blame one person in the relationship? That already shows how ridiculous you are. It's frustrating and upsetting but, gosh, if I've had a time in my life where I made a rude comment based on something inappropriate and then come to appreciate people for the inner person they are, then all I can hope is those people are on the same path and they'll end up where we'd all like to see them be. I can just only hope for the best. I hate to say it, but it's the world we live in and it's always going to be there in some form.

AE: Many of our readers look at you as a sort of role model for straight men. How do you feel about that?
ML: Man, that's the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day. I'm incredibly humbled that somebody would think that the way I choose to treat other people would be something admirable. All I can say is thanks. I'm speechless. I don't know. That's awesome. I hope more of that can come out, I guess.

Charlie, Marcus and the "Onion" alliance

AE: So you and Charlie are still friends?
ML: Absolutely. I've got a couple best friends in the world, and he's definitely become one of them. It's one of the things you have to realize about the show. If you think about it mathematically, if you meet somebody you hang out with them a couple hours a week. Well, we hung out with each other twenty-four hours straight. You pack a two-month relationship into one day. I feel like I've had a five-year friendship with Charlie and we really only hung out for a few weeks. I think that he's such a genuinely good person I hope he's a part of my life for a long time. We're also campaigning heavily to be on the Amazing Race, if that's possible.

AE: We'll be rooting for that!
ML: That would be awesome.

AE: Thank you so much for talking to us, and for being such a great guy and role model.
ML: Thank you. I'm really honored to be a part of your site. It's really nice to hear that. Thanks a lot.

AE: Good luck with The Amazing Race. We'll be watching for you!
ML: Thanks, man. I appreciate it.