5/22/2014

From Glee to Sean Hayes: Gay Actors Play Straight

From Glee to Sean Hayes: Gay Actors Play

Straight
By Ramin Setoodeh | 5/27/10 at 12:57 PM

This story was first posted on the Web on April 26, 2010.
The reviews for the broadway revival of Promises, Promises were negative enough, even
though most of the critics ignored the real problemthe big pink elephant in the room.
The leading man of this musical-romantic comedy is supposed to be an advertising peon
named Chuck, who is madly in love with a co-worker (Kristin Chenoweth). When the play
opened on Broadway in 1968, Jerry Orbach, an actor with enough macho swagger to later
fuel years and years of Law & Order, was the star. The revival hands the lead over to Sean
Hayes, best known as the queeny Jack on Will & Grace. Hayes is among Hollywoods best
verbal slapstickers, but his sexual orientation is part of who he is, and also part of his
charm. (The fact that he came out of the closet only just before Promises was another one
of those Ricky Martin duh moments.) But frankly, its weird seeing Hayes play straight.
He comes off as wooden and insincere, as if hes trying to hide something, which of course

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From Glee to Sean Hayes: Gay Actors Play Straight

he is. Even the plays most hilarious scene, when Chuck tries to pick up a drunk woman at
a bar, devolves into unintentional camp. Is it funny because of all the 60s-era one-liners,
or because the woman is so drunk (and clueless) that she agrees to go home with a guy we
all know is gay?
This is no laughing matter, however. For decades, Hollywood has kept gay actorsTab
Hunter, Van Johnson, Richard Chamberlain, Rock Hudson, etc.in the closet, to their
detriment. The fear was, if people knew your sexual orientation, you could never work
again. Thankfully, this seems ridiculous in the era of Portia de Rossi and Neil Patrick
Harris. But the truth is, openly gay actors still have reason to be scared. While its OK for
straight actors to play gay (as Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger did in Brokeback
Mountain), its rare for someone to pull off the trick in reverse. De Rossi and Harris do
that on TV, but they also inhabit broad caricatures, not realistic characters like the ones
in Up in the Air or even The Proposal. Last year, Rupert Everett caused a ruckus when he
told The Guardian that gay actors should stay in the closet. The fact is, he said, that
you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in
the?.?.?.?film business. Is he just bitter or honest? Maybe both.
Most actors would tell you that the biographical details of their lives are beside the point.
Except when theyre not. As viewers, we are molded by a society obsessed with dissecting
sexuality, starting with the locker-room torture in junior high school. Which is why its a
little hard to know what to make of the latest fabulous player to join Glee: Jonathan
Groff, the openly gay Broadway star. In Spring Awakening, he showed us that hes a
knockout singer and a heartthrob. But on TV, as the shifty glee captain from another
school who steals Rachels heart, theres something about his performance that feels off.
In half his scenes he scowlsis that a substitute for being straight? When he smiles or
giggles, he seems more like your average theater queen, a better romantic match for Kurt
than for Rachel. It doesnt help that he tried to bed his girlfriend while singing (and
writhing to) Madonnas Like a Virgin. He is so distracting Im starting to wonder if
Groffs character on the show is supposed to be secretly gay.
This is admittedly a complicated issue for the gay community, though it is not, in fact, a
uniquely gay problem. In the 1950s the idea of colorblind casting became a reality, and
the result is that today theres nothing to stop Denzel Washington from playing the
Walter Matthau role in the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. Jack Nicholson, by the
force of his charm, makes you forget how hes entirely too old to win Helen Hunts heart

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From Glee to Sean Hayes: Gay Actors Play Straight

in As Good as It Gets. For gay actors, why should sexual orientation limit a gay actors
choice of roles? The fact is, an actors background does affect how we see his or her
performancewhich is why the Denzels or the Tom Hanks-es of the world guard their
privacy carefully.
Its not just a problem for someone like Hayes, who tips off even your grandmothers
gaydar. For all the beefy bravado that Rock Hudson pro-jects onscreen, Pillow Talk
dissolves into a farce when you know the likes of his true bedmates. (Just rewatch the
scene where hes wading around in a bubble bath by himself.) Lesbian actresses might
have it easiersince straight men think its OK for them to kiss a girl and like itbut
how many of them can you name? Cynthia Nixon had a male partner when she originated
Miranda on Sex and the City, Kelly McGillis was straight when she steamed up Top Guns
sheets, and Anne Heche went back to dating men (including her Men in Trees costar); we
believed their characters before their sexuality became an issue. If an actor of the stature
of George Clooney came out of the closet tomorrow, would we still accept him as a
heterosexual leading man? Its hard to say. Or maybe not. Doesnt it mean something that
no openly gay actor like that exists?

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