“The Kids in the Hall”’s Scott Thompson: “I’m No Mammy”

Before there was Will and Jack on Will & Grace or David and Keith on Six Feet Under or pretty much everyone on Queer as Folk, there was Buddy on Kids in the Hall. And before Neil Patrick Harris or T.R. Knight or Lance Bass came out, there was actor/comedian Scott Thompson who not only played Buddy on Kids in the Hall, but also played gay assistant Brian on The Larry Sanders Show, and who was out personally and professionally long before it was easy to do so.

Scott Thompson

But then Thompson has never done much that was easy. He came out in the 80s during the height of the AIDS epidemic. He did stand-up comedy in an era where homophobia wasn’t just rampant, it was expected and particularly vicious. Then there is the matter of his latest project, Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town, a television series on IFC featuring that Thompson took on shortly after learning he had cancer, and then filmed right after completing chemotherapy treatment.

AfterElton.com caught up with Thompson to discuss his new project, his battle with cancer and his standing in the gay community, which hasn’t always been a laughing matter for the 51-year-old Canadian.

AfterElton.com: Why a Kids in the Hall reunion at this point?
Scott Thompson: I guess we figured this was our last chance where we could use the moniker and not be completely ridiculous. We did a tour two years ago, and we wrote all this new material. We wrote a ton of stuff and just thought, wow, this is amazing. We decided, let's see if we can do television again.

Rather than make another movie that's so difficult and no one goes to it, we said, "Why not make a TV show that no one watches?" We started planning it two years ago when we were touring. We were paralyzed in a way by our legacy for sketch comedy. We could never top it. So this is a different animal.

AE: I loved the character of Heather Weather the second I saw her. It's the whole package — that hair, the way she dresses, the attitude that you deliver. Was she something you've been doing for a while?
ST: Oh my Lord! Not at all. She was just a name and an idea, and I had no idea how I was going to play her. I promised everyone I did, but I didn't. The truth is, I never knew how to play her until the day we shot it.

It was me and Dave. Both of us were in the makeup chair. I was getting made up as Heather, and he was getting made up as Levon. Neither of us really knew, and we were shooting it! We didn't have a clue how we were going to play them.

Scott Thompson as Heather Weather (left) and Kevin McDonald as Shayne (right) Credit: Michael Gibson/IFC

AE: I know the series has already run in Canada. Did people have the same reaction I did to her?
ST: You know, it's funny. I said the other day, I think I finally have a female character that gay men are going to love. Because she's mean. She's nasty. I've never quite played a woman so bitchy and malevolent. Gay men like those kinds of gals. My other women are all too much nicer.

AE: I haven't seen enough of her to know that. I just liked her look and her voice.
ST: She's a cougar. Gay men loved the Kim Catrall character more than any other on Sex in the City. So I thought, Kim Catrall is not the only aging Canadian blonde beauty. [laughs] I can play her too.

AE: Did having the project to work on while you were going through treatment for your cancer help you?
ST: Well, it would have been if the show hadn't been called Death Comes to Town. [laughs] Maybe if it had been a remake of The Brady Bunch or something.

It was the best thing for me. I said to my doctors, "August 1st I finish chemo, August 10th, I need to be in Heather's heels. This is the way it's going to be." And they said, "Well, we hope you can do it." And I said, "No. I'm going to do it, because I have another C-word, and it's comeback."

It actually made me focus more on death, but in a funny way. I think what it did was give me a lot of hope. I told my doctors, "I have to get through this." I had six months of chemotherapy treatments, then did the show. They rearranged the series. It was supposed to be earlier, but I didn't finish my chemo, so they pushed it back.

Then when I did the series, seven weeks, and then went right to radiation. Then I completely fell apart. Completely. Physically. Some of the side effects of chemo take a little while before they emerge, like monsters, like the Swamp Thing. It was wonderful how the body holds itself together when it has to. I went to the hospital four times during the making of the series, but never overnight. They never stopped production.