Sean Maher Finds Serenity As An Openly Gay Man

We've been fans of actor Sean Maher for a while now, from his short-lived series Ryan Caulfield: Year One, to his stints on Firefly (and the big-screen Serenity), to his newest role in NBC's The Playboy Club.

Now there's a reason to like him even more. He's just publicly come out to Entertainment Weekly.

In the article, Sean talks about his reason for coming out now, and it all comes down to his family - His partner Paul and their two children, Sophie Rose, 4, and Liam Xavier, 14 months.

“I have these beautiful children and this extraordinary family,” Maher says, “and to think in any way shape or form that that’s wrong or that there’s shame in that or that there’s something to hide actually turns my stomach.” Maher kept thinking about what daughter Sophie would say when she realized he was closeted professionally. “What would she think if I said, ‘Oh honey, you can’t come with me to work because they don’t know I have an adopted daughter and they don’t know that I’m gay.’ My children and our family, I’ve really never been as proud of anything in my life. I couldn’t be happier at this point in my life, and I feel like we’ve created this pretty extraordinary family.”

He also says that his role as a closeted man on The Playboy Club helped his decision.

Maher decided to use his role on NBC’s The Playboy Club — a character coincidentally also named Sean, a closeted man who’s married to lesbian Playboy Bunny Alice (Leah Renee Cudmore) – to finally engage in a dialogue about how being closeted has strained his life in Hollywood. “I was working on other stuff, and then this role came up, which was like a light bulb going off,” Maher remembers. “I was like, This is perfect. I want to do this, and I want to use it as a platform to come out.”

You should head over to the EW link to read more on Sean's life as a closeted actor who's now "so much more open and free," and congrats to Sean for taking that step.

And because this is a happy post, we won't get in to The Playboy Club's ratings.