We don't really get to see gay characters who are completely open with their sexuality, but it doesn't define who they are.
For whatever reason, gay characters, or characters that deal with sexuality issues, who are black, in 'black films'... are typically not dealt with with any sort of complexity. They're exoticized: their being gay is sort of the point.
All shows need more twinks.
The idea of the gay experience, it feels like a relic. I felt like in the '90s when we were watching the gay characters on 'The Real World,' there was definitely a gay experience that was distinct from a straight experience. If you talk to high schoolers in 2017, I don't know that is as much a part of how they experience a social dynamic.
Nobody knew if the pilot would even get picked up because it had two gay lead characters, which has never happened before. And now every show has at least two gay characters, if not many more.
I think being gay has resulted in gay characters standing front and center in all of my work.
Any show that has a completely gay ensemble has the very difficult task of trying to represent the community.
I think every time there's a show like 'Modern Family' or 'Will & Grace' that portray gay and lesbian characters and is successful, it just further opens the door.
When I was a kid, there were hardly any gay story lines or characters on television that I recall. Then when I was in college, 'Will & Grace' started up.
Now, it's weird not to have gay characters on a show.
As an actor, it was important to me to play gay characters because, growing up, it was something I never really saw done on television and in film, and I was questioning why there weren't more people like me.
When I started, there was more of a cultural assumption that many readers would find gay characters irrelevant or repugnant.
In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.
I love that we've chipped away at the celluloid closet and have wonderful programs that feature gay and lesbian characters in really rich, fully developed ways.
I can remember when there were storylines with gay characters on shows like 'Family' and 'Dynasty' and thinking, I have something in common with that person. This was way before the Internet and all the visibility that has brought with it.
Famously, DC has been pretty great showing gay women, with characters like Batwoman, but has shown fewer prominent men on the sexuality spectrum outside of hetero. It's something we need to address. I also think it's lovely how the readers respond to this.
I don't think there is a guy that played more gay characters than I have done in my life.
I probably haven't had enough gay characters in my stuff. When you're writing something, you're thinking, 'Why couldn't this person be black, white, gay?'
I think it's very important that, you know, gay actors get to play gay characters.
The representation of gay characters on screen is important for us all to think about because there are sadly too few representations of gay characters on screen in mainstream cinema. If Marvel starts making movies about gay superheroes, then we'll be in a really great place. We're not at that place.
Without a conscious effort, all of my plays have all featured gay characters. I'm proud of that.
I kind of cheer the presence of any gay characters at all - I think the more we can saturate television with any gay character or lesbian character or transgender character, I think that's a really great thing. We're kind of getting past the fact that they're the punchline or that they're the novelty.
I've known gay people - men and women - since I was a young person. To me it's just naturalistic and realistic to portray gay characters in a humanistic light. As a young man, I knew enough gay people as people not to fear them. On the other side of the coin, I like to irritate conservatives and homophobes.
I had played many gay characters before, but they were finite - guest characters in TV shows or characters in plays.
ABC's intelligently hilarious sitcom 'Modern Family' depicts a gay-male marriage in which both partners are refreshingly dimensional, believable human beings. The writers dare to make them flawed and thus fully delineated, but they're not flawed in the silly, stereotypical ways that once dominated such portrayals.
