“Brothers & Sisters” New Showrunner on Kevin and Scotty’s Surrogacy Storyline

David Marshall Grant

Last month, ABC announced that David Marshall Grant was taking over showrunning duties for the Sunday night drama Brothers & Sisters. The news was of special interest to gay fans as the out Grant is also an actor probably best known for his brief but memorable appearance on thirtysomething as the gay Russell Weller. Grant appeared on four episodes of the show during the ’89-‘90 season including the infamous outing that showed Russell in bed with his boyfriend. That scene set off a furor with numerous advertisers pulling their ads and leading ABC to yank that particular episode from repeats.

Fortunately, things have changed a great deal since then, and it might even seem like karma that Grant is now in charge of one of the most gay-friendly shows on television. ABC recently made Grant available for short interviews to discuss the show and his new role. Naturally, we asked him about Kevin and Scotty.

AfterElton.com: Our readers are very interested in Kevin and Scotty. What's going to happen with the surrogacy storyline that you can talk about?
David Marshall Grant: Surrogacy is going to be a big factor for them this season. We're going to follow the natural progression of it, and the drama of it, and the ups and downs of surrogacy. We're going to try to take it in a time appropriate pace in our story. I think it'll be with us for the whole rest of the season.

Scotty (Luke Macfarlane) and Kevin (Matthew Rhys) spar
over the decision to start a family.

AE: When you say it'll be with us for the rest of the season, can you say whether they're going to go through with it?
DMG: Well, they're going to debate that, of course, then they have to pick a surrogate, well, that's already ... you know. And then they go through the process of having to pick the egg donor and then you have get them all together and harvest the egg, then you have to figure out who's eggs are whose, which one are you going to implant, does the implantation take. It's just so many steps in that journey. We want to really mine and honor all the steps along the way when you try for surrogacy.

AE: Can you give me a hint as to who's going to be considered for an egg donor?
DMG: I think one of the fun things about egg donors is that you can get them at an egg donor bank, so you go online, the egg donor or surrogacy center data bank you choose them from, where they are harvested from, is online, so it's just a fun, interesting way of choosing who will technically be the mother of your child. [laughs] The egg donor part of it is usually done semi-anonymously, in that you don't know their last name, but you know everything else about them. You see videos, pictures, childhood pictures, so it's a strange process of picking people online.