Sexy dancer-cum-handyman Francis Toumbakaris swings his big, gay hammer on new HGTV show ‘Brother v. Brother’

READY, SET, RENOVATE | Francis Toumbakaris doesn’t mind being the ‘token gay’ on ‘Brother v. Brother’ — he’s also the token hottie.

HGTV’s newest renovation stud, Francis Toumbakaris, is as comfortable in a pair of tights and pointe shoes as he is in work boots and overalls. Trained in classical ballet since age 12, Toumbakaris has high-kicked his way onto stages in national tours of Fosse and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and on Broadway in the revival of Fiddler on the Roof starring Alfred Molina (and later, Harvey Fierstein and Rosie O’Donnell). Other theatrical career highlights include the award-winning Susan Stroman dance musical Contact and Candide at New York City Opera.

“Drama is in my blood,” he says. “I am Greek, after all. Drama was born in my country.”

His sense for the flamboyant shines in Brother v. Brother, HGTV’s latest competition show where renovators are split into two teams — headed by Property Brothers siblings Drew and Jonathan Scott — to compete for a $50,000 cash prize. Toumbakaris is one of the contestants on Team Jonathan, hoping to take home the big prize. And he’s not shy about being the token gay on the show.

“I’m out and loud,” he says. “I’m not afraid to get dirty and I thrive on making decisions on the fly. I want to think I am a likable character, but it’s a show where even within our own teams, we are pitted against one another. The show is filled with conflict.”

A lot of that conflict has been fueled by Toumbakaris, whose decision to use a vivid wall color in the series premiere nearly got him booted. Since then, he has alternately flummoxed and delighted his teammates with his antics and fiery Greek personality.

Toumbakaris has been financially independent since he was 15, when he left his Athens home on scholarship to attend the prestigious Rudra Béjart dance school in Switzerland. The same year Toumbakaris entered high school, he signed a lease on his own studio apartment. To make the tiny studio a home away from home, he painted, decorated and, with the help of his stepfather, constructed customized furniture for it.

“I designed a dual purpose kitchen island that would allow me extra counter space and storage. What 15-year-old thinks of that?” he laughs. “But I loved it. I felt the same thrill handling tools as I did pointing my toes and trying to leap higher than anyone else in my ballet class.”

In 2000, on a tourist visa, Toumbakaris set out for New York City. He had only $2,000 in his pocket, money he had saved from being a backup dancer for a pop singer in Greece. But he was young, driven and ambitious.

He would land the occasional theater and film job, but he needed another job to see him through the lean months between gigs. After returning from touring with Scoundrels, he placed an ad looking for small painting projects, repair work and other odd jobs.

“I would ride around the city on my bicycle and a backpack full of tools,” Toumbakaris says.

The big surprise was when his survival job began to take on a life of its own. One satisfied client referred another, which led to another and so on. Within a year, Toumbakaris went from completing simple jobs to doing full-scale renovations in Manhattan apartments. In 2007, his contracting and design company, Greek & Handy, was established.

Toumbakaris believes his years as a dancer helped prepare him for design. The stage taught him to be fearless, to perform under tremendous stress and to make the job work even when all appears to be going wrong. It taught him to trust his gut instinct and most importantly, dance taught him about the art of space.

“Dancers learn to appreciate how bodies and objects flow through space. I bring that philosophy into my renovations, striving to find the perfect balance in a room through smart design and efficient layout.”

According to Toumbakaris, good design is not simply about pretty colors, fabrics and accessories. It is an art that requires precise and intricate problem solving. “I am constantly calculating new ways to improve my clients’ work and living environments.”

Toumbakaris describes his style as comfortable luxury with a classic urban feel. “I like to think of myself as the orchestra conductor.

Although I may not play all the instruments, I direct all the moving pieces to create one beautiful harmony.”

His theatrical training even helped to land Brother Vs. Brother. ”I auditioned three times for the network, hoping to compete on season four of HGTV’s Design Star.” However, producers felt Toumbakaris’ background in home construction was better suited for Drew and Jonathan’s new show.

He’s excited that Brother Vs. Brother is giving him the opportunity to combine his love of show biz with his passion for renovation. “I never thought wearing a tool belt would give me the chance to perform on a new stage,” he says. “But why not? I’m an artist. I’m always looking to create something new.”

His ambition extends beyond the show. A Greek & Handy line of tools, paints and home goods is in the works. Toumbakaris also aims to find a husband and build a family. Yes, the dancer-turned-handyman-turned-interior renovator admits he is anxious for his next big role, that of daddy.

And by daddy, he means, being a parent … just so we’re clear.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

Brother v. Brother airs on HGTV Sundays at 9 p.m.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition August 2, 2013.

HBO airs new sex documentary

PILLOW TALK | George and Farid, one of two gay couples in the doc ‘Americans In Bed.’

Americans in Bed, a new HBO documentary, puts couples (including some same-sex) in their beds, turns on the camera and has them all pillow-talk about their intimate experiences. Those familiar with HBO will recognize the tone as similar to Real Sex and Taxicab Confessions series, with a hint of Woody Allen thrown in. The 10 profiled couples range from Jersey Shore-ish Joe & Patty to 6-foot-6 polyamorous Leon and his 4-foot-10 girlfriend Blanca to the elderly, randy Helen & Red, wed 71 years.

You’re likely to react, as I did, to each couple uniquely. A few (Fatima & Kevin, Antonio & Roberta) don’t leave much of an impression, even when the emotions they express are sometimes uncomfortably honest. Leon seems like an ass, while Randy & Julie (especially Julie) seem shallow (“Sex is the most important thing in our relationship … and I think I’m speaking for every woman in the world,” she announces).

It’s refreshing to see a Muslim couple (newlyweds Yasmine & Mohamed) profiled, as it is lesbians Linda & Margie and almost charmingly old-fashioned gay men George & Farid.

“Either you sleep with each other right away or you don’t,” Farid says — but he and George waited a while … almost to no end. (“The first time we had sex was terrible,” they agree. “Even though the sex was bad, I thought maybe it will get better,” George says. “But I didn’t just see him as a sexual being. I saw him as a partner. I don’t know what changed, but it got better.”) When Farid tears up talking about children, you’re touched by the depth of their feelings.

Perhaps the most interesting element, though, is listening to the hetero couples work out their issues. Gay couples (especially men) are accustomed to coming up with their own relationship rules about fidelity and openness and sex; watching Farid & George profess their monogamy while the straight men (and women!) disparage it tickled me. It just goes to prove deep down, we’re all the same … because we’re all different.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

Debuts Monday on HBO at 8 p.m.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition August 9, 2013.

Dallas fashionista Gregg Asher leads the ‘charge!’ on ‘Million Dollar Shoppers’

TEAM RETAIL | Dallas fashionista Gregg Asher, right, and his best girlfriend Tayler, make up the only team of personal shoppers finding luxury items for the customers on the new Lifetime reality show ‘Million Dollar Shopper.’

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  |  Life+Style Editor

Gregg Asher wants to make one thing perfectly clear: The dress he wears in the premiere episode of the new reality show Million Dollar Shoppers is a man’s garment. And like every bit of clothing he wears, it’s from his own wardrobe.

“I don’t ever wear dresses, but if a designer puts a man’s dress down the runway, I’m gonna wear it!” he proudly crows. There’s something liberating about wearing a one-piece and running around. It’s breathable!”

But, I point out, he ruins the comfort by walking around in 6-inch stilettos.

“Well, you have to keep it real,” Asher concedes. “What can I say? I like to be taller.” (For the record, the dress was the only item of menswear he did have on in that scene, though he’s happily being a gay man — he likes being a gurrrlll, but “I never want to be a girl — I don’t want cramps.”)

Asher sticks out even on the streets of New York City, where much of the series, which begins Thursday, was shot. So you can imagine how, growing up in small-town Arkansas, Asher made an impact digging through bargain bins looking for couture. But the Dallas-based fashionista and personal shopper always likes to have fun with fashion.

“I love sparkle and rhinestones, so I always try to throw some of that in there,” he says. “I have fun with fashion, rather than take it too seriously. I was lighthearted with it — you have to have fun, [especially] when you’re spending that kind of money. Tayler is more like the man of the group and I’m more like Crissy from Three’s Company.”

Tayler is Asher’s best girlfriend “from a hundred years ago,” the second half of the only team on Million Dollar Shoppers, the Weinstein-produced series for Lifetime that, on each episode, matches personal shoppers with clients who have more money than taste, and hopes to show where a retail consulting can up the level of style … with limits.

“This isn’t really a styling show, it’s a shopping show,” he says. “We always do a look-over through [the client’s] closet to see what they love, but if they want a bathing suit and maybe are too old for what they want,” they might suggest something that is more body-flattering than they would choose for themselves.

“I think everyone has their own taste level, and it’s why a lot of these people are open to having people guide them,” he says. But guidance doesn’t always translate into tastefulness.

“The fact is, the woman [in the premiere] was getting an award for philanthropy, and yet she thought it was appropriate to wear a bustier [to the awards banquet]. I can’t even imagine what was going through her mind. It’s not every day you’ll find someone who’s not a hooker who knows where to find a bustier.” (He ended up calling Cyndi Lauper to get her advice.)

Asher admits that the show — which he hasn’t seen yet — doesn’t entirely reflect how personal shoppers really operate. He didn’t pick his clients, for instance, and the producers allowed for more back-and-forth shopping trips to extend the drama. “There are episodes where we did take pictures and send images” to the client, though they may not make the final cut. “But they all really did have money, and they were buying with their credit cards.”

Asher is no novice to reality TV. You can catch him in the background of several different series. In fact, he came to join the cast of MDS when a friend of his was auditioning for The Real Housewives of New York City about five years ago.

“She was not chosen [for Real Housewives], but I was put in the back pocket as a person who had some fashion background. So when they decided [to make MDS], having me was a no-brainer,” he says.

Asher has spent six or seven years personal shopping, originally in Dallas to help out Tayler, who is based in New York. But every few weeks he flies up to assist with her Big Apple clients as well. (He’ll next be in New York the week before the premiere, attending a dinner party held by producer Harvey Weinstein to honor the cast.)

Weinstein’s full-throated support of the show gives Asher hope that a second season will follow the initial six-episode commitment to MDS. If so, it would give him the chance to do something he really wanted to this season: Showcase Dallas ladies.

“Everyone has such faith in it, I think they are already plotting for a second season, and if they do, we’re looking to get two Dallas women to go abroad with us. That’s something to look forward to — it needs some Dallas girls in it,” he says.

He admits he’s slightly nervous about the reaction — reality TV “really opens you up to some scrutiny and criticism,” and his boyfriend, while supportive, “is a little antsy about it all.” But Asher hopes his eye for style comes across as luxurious and opens up more opportunities to share his fashion sense with the world.

“I would love to make a line of products that my family in Arkansas can have a piece of,” he says. “And I have some great looks in me that will blow some minds.”

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition October 4, 2013.

My two most hated phrases in entertainment journalism? (1) “A surprisingly good performance by Bruce Willis.” (When will you cease being surprised he can act?) (2) “Raquel Welch is still beautiful at age x,” where x equals any age since she turned 40. I mean, she’s gorgeous and all, and not 22 anymore, but when will you stop noticing that?

Well, the answer may well be “never.” I hate that cliché, but damn if it isn’t true. Welch plays the mama of Gianni and Donatella Versace in Lifetime’s House of Versace, another in the network’s racy biopics. This one’s a twofer: Gianni (Enrico Colantoni), the gay designer murdered by stalker Andrew Cunanan in 1997; and even more so Donatella (Gina Gershon), his sister who took over the luxury line after his death.

Ever since Maya Rudolph’s languorous caricature of the style icon on Saturday Night Live, it’s been impossible to look at the Botoxed fashionista and not see her as a self-parody. That changes with Gershon’s performance; she embraces its camp, then supersedes it. Gershon sinks into the role, thick-as-marinara accent and all. And Colantoni — whose relationship with his sexy boyfriend Antonio is directly and unprovocatively addressed — bears an eerie resemblance to the real Gianni while convincingly evoking his creativity.

The script doesn’t do justice to Gershon’s man-eating turn or Welch’s inherent glamour. As with many mainstream TV movies, it relies on predictable conflicts and trite melodrama too often. But the pearly elegance and glitzy behind-the-scenes fashion insights, plus its iconic female stars, make this catnip for gays.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

Three stars. House of Versace premieres Sunday at 7 p.m. on Lifetime.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition October 4, 2013.

When I saw Redemption earlier this year, when it was in the running for an Oscar for best documentary short, I thought it had a serious shot at winning (though the ultimate winner, Inocente, was very, very deserving). It’s not easy to see short films, especially docs, so it’s great that HBO does such a good job airing them, which it does with Redemption tonight at 7:40 p.m. (with rebroadcast through tomorrow).

The documentary on first glance seems to be about “canners,” mostly homeless folks who collect recyclable cans and plastic bottle for the deposit along New York’s Upper West Side. But it’s not so much about homeless people as it is a symbol for the toll the economic downturn has taken on all walks of life. Yes, there are alcoholic veterans and illegal aliens, but also a retired computer expert who can’t like off of Social Security, and families who do what the can to get by. It’s worth the half-hour it takes to watch.

We continue our look back at ’13 with a list of the people in North Texas arts and culture who helped define the year

NO SURPRISE | ‘Modern Family’ is still TV’s best sitcom. Hurray for the gays — Cam (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitch (Jesse Tyler Ferguson).

TV is one of the few pop culture categories where year in, year out you can — but don’t have to — see the same titles over and over again. As much as there is to enjoy on television — reality competition series, period dramas, premium cable epics — coming up with a definitive list of shows worthy of watching would be herculean. But when it comes down to it, a great show is one you cannot miss … and there are only so many hours in the day/week/ year you “can’t miss” something. You need to pick your battles. And these are the battles I engaged in for 2013.

10 (tie). Archer (FX) and Scandal (ABC). Two very different takes on political intrigue: One a foul-mouthed adult cartoon about a mama’s-boy superspy (one of the gayest shows on TV), the other a juicy nighttime soap about Washington insiders … and perhaps the next gayest show on TV. Scandal really came into its own in 2013, but Archer just kept us laughing for a fourth season. (The fifth starts up soon.)

9. Portlandia (IFC). Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen embody every cliché (and every character) in the crunchy-granola dreamworld of a woozy Pacific Northwest enclave. A friend said she didn’t “get” the series at all. I said, “Pretend it was called Austinia.” She got it.

8. RuPaul’s Drag Race (Logo). Still TV’s best reality show, every episode has wit, drama, high doses of camp and real heart as the queens confront genuine issues in their real lives (HIV, parent-child conflict, even coming out as transgender). You often cry between squeals of delight, and you certainly can’t imagine another show treating gay people with more respect.

7. Downton Abbey (PBS). Last season shocked viewers over and over with unexpected developments including the death of two beloved characters. The upcoming season will be an impossible follow-up.

6. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart with John Oliver (Comedy Central). Who could have predicted that when host JS went away for three months, his replacement — a spastic Brit with a self-deprecating style — would be thrown into the craziest summer news cycle in history, and would emerge as the voice of the frustrated electorate? Oliver has since left The Daily Show for his own gig on HBO; we won’t miss it.

5.  Orange is the New Black, House of Cards and Arrested Development (Netflix). The online movie  streaming service rocketed its way into TV with its brilliant platforming (all episodes available simultaneously) and judicious artistic choices that included another political potboiler, an off-beat women-in-prison comedy-drama and the return of the greatest sitcom of the millennium.

4. Modern Family (ABC). Week after week, the funniest and most accurate depiction of the way semi-functional families actually operate. At least we like to think so. Even the kids are perfect — and who ever says that about a family comedy?

3. Behind the Candelabra (HBO). Steven Soderbergh’s made-for-cable biopic about Liberace was one of the frankest depictions of gay life in the ’70s anyone could hope to make, with a career-defining performance by Michael Douglas.

2. Key & Peele (Comedy Central). Sketch comedy that deals with race, sexual orientation and relationships with more insight than anything TV has ever seen. Dave Chappelle wishes his show was ever one-tenth as funny.

1. Game of Thrones (HBO). Consistently our most compelling and well-wrought drama is a fantasy period piece with dragons that seems as real and immediate as anything set around a kitchen table. It manages to keep scores of characters in play and developed while demonstrating the highest production values of any show on TV.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition January 3, 2014.

The creator and star of new series about a gay rapper talk about their edgy take on anime

IT’S A RAP | ‘SNL’ alum Bobby Moynihan, inset, voices ex-con gay white rapper Chozen, center, in a new animated series.

CHRIS AZZOPARDI  | Contributing Writer
chrisazzopardi@pridesource.com

He’s here, he’s queer … and he raps? It’s almost an oxymoron — or it used to be. But then there was Frank Ocean, the gay hip-hop god who came out in 2012, and last year’s rising star Macklemore, the emcee whose pro-gay “Same Love” made a splash on urban radio.

The next step? Obviously a cartoon all about a gay rapper. Chozen, the brainchild of Eastbound & Down writer Grant Dekernion, is the first of its kind: An FX original series starring an unapologetically queer ex-con who slays with his wicked rhymes. And you know, he just happens to like the penis. It’s pretty gay. But how gay?

“Oh gosh, I guess I don’t know what the parameters are for that,” laughs Dekernion. “You know what, I can tell you this: Chozen is a super confident, super open type of guy. He’s a pretty sexual guy. I see Chozen as a 15-year-old boy in that he doesn’t have a filter and he has some basic needs — money, food, sex — and he’s very open about that.”

In personifying the character — a creation that just came to Dekernion randomly one day — there was one fundamental goal: Do something that had never been done.

“I chose his sexuality, which is obviously a huge part of him but not all of him,” Dekernion says, “and I also had the story where he’s been on hard times, he’s coming out of jail and he’s not necessarily a bad guy. It’s this whole idea of a man trying to re-enter society.”

Voicing the titular emcee is Bobby Moynihan, the longtime Saturday Night Live regular who, in his years on SNL, is familiar with doing gay things, most of it involving drag.

“They love putting me in dresses,” Moynihan laughs. “That’s their favorite thing to do. I didn’t mind it at first. But now, it’s just stockings are hard to put on, and I’m lazy.”

For his part as Chozen, the comedian jumped at the chance to audition, and not just because this is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (there’s not exactly a demand for gay rapper roles — or fake cartoon ones, at that). What had Moynihan most pumped was working with Method Man, who costars as Chozen’s nemesis, Phantasm. (The show also features the voices of Michael Peña, Danny McBride and Nick Swardson, the Reno 911! actor whose entire career has been one gay thing after another.)

Moynihan compares the show to Dekernion’s edgy Eastbound & Down, also starring McBride, noting  “[Chozen] is gay in the show and he’s very aggressive and he does enjoy the company of men, and there are scenes with that, but it’s not just the gay, white rapper show.”

And GLAAD, don’t worry: Chozen isn’t here to represent all the gays. “Chozen is one character — he’s one person — and he has traits that are unique to him, so I feel like he speaks for himself and the show speaks for him and he doesn’t speak for any community as a whole,” Dekernion says. “He’s an out-there, brash guy and he behaves in that way. What you see is what you get.”

What you get, according to Moynihan, is one helluva dirty gay time. For instance, Chozen demonstrates how to play a butthole like a saxophone … and that, seen in the trailer, just scratches the surface. “We go as far as we can,” Dekernion affirms. No full-frontal cartoon nudity, though audiences will see the bearishly hunk Chozen in various stages of undress.

When he’s not making beautiful sounds out of a sphincter, Chozen is bonding with friends and having not-just-sexual relationships with other gay men.

“It’s not political, it’s not about identity politics,” Dekernion says. “It’s, ‘How does this man relate to people? How did he go through his life?

How did he experience things?’ These are all common themes that affect everyone, gay or straight.”

Dekernion calls Chozen an “anomaly;” he doesn’t fit into any box, and he wasn’t directly inspired by any real-life rappers (and actually, Dekernion is the one spitting Chozen’s hot fire). But that doesn’t mean some of Dekernion’s own personal musical picks — like queer rapper/metropolitan virtuoso Mykki Blanco — didn’t rub off on Chozen.

“Mykki Blanco is great visually and he does cool stuff, and his clothes are interesting,” Dekernion says. “I am definitely hip to a lot of different people in rap, both from the straight and gay scenes, and I think there’s some really cool stuff going on.”

Could Chozen and the show inspire more of the same pro-gay progress Macklemore and Frank Ocean have already brought to hip-hop? “If something good did come out of it, that would be great. I think we’d all love that,” Dekernion says. “But I didn’t create the character or pick hip-hop or anything with that thought. I think those things happen organically anyway — hopefully. But I work with people in the hip-hop community and they haven’t always been warm and fuzzy, but I’m hoping that will change. There have been some steps made for it, but obviously we still have a long way to go.”

One need only look to Eminem’s latest album to see that homophobia in hip-hop isn’t just a thing of the past. What would Chozen tell Eminem about his gay slurs if he were to confront him? Moynihan isn’t sure he’d be able to face him … and only because the comedian himself couldn’t when the rapper was right there in front of him on SNL.

“I just said ‘hi,’” he recalls, “and then ran away.”

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition January 10, 2014.

January is always a busy time on TV: The midseason replacement series begin with the end of football season and the ratings losers swept away before the new year starts. And even popular shows kick off new episodes after a holiday season of reruns, all leading up to February sweeps.

But this year January is especially flush with gay-themed and gay-interest shows making their debuts. Here are some of the debuts you should keep an eye out for:

Banshee (Cinemax), Jan. 10 at 9 p.m. The ultraviolent crime drama starts its second season this week, with Hoon Lee playing a coolly ruthless transgender mobster.

Archer (FX), Jan. 13 at 9 p.m. The lead-in for the new animated series Chozen is an adult cartoon with a ton of gay content, as pictured left.

Under the Gunn (Lifetime), Jan. 16 at 8 p.m. Emmy Award winner Tim Gunn, the avuncular but laser-sharp co-host of Project Runway, gets his own series (premiering right after this season’s All-Stars finale). Competitors team with former Runway stars Nick Verreos, Mondo Guerra and Anya Ayoung-Chee.

Looking (HBO), Jan. 19 at 9:30 p.m. HBO’s gay companion piece to its darling hit Girls (already kinda gay itself) debuts, as it following gay San Francisco men navigate the modern dating world. Stars Jonathan Groff (Glee, Broadway’s Spring Awakening), who also produces.

RuPaul’s Drag Race (Logo), February. The sixth season, pitting 14 queens, above, in a race for America’s next great drag superstar, begins in February, though no exact date has been announced.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition January 10, 2014.

Jonathan Groff

Jonathan Groff has had a pretty good week. The animated film he stars in, Frozen, was just nominated for two Oscars and his new HBO series, Looking, debuts on Sunday. So it was a good time for our Chris Azzopardi to sit down with Groff to discuss all his gay projects, idolizing Mark Ruffalo and how Looking freaked out his family.  

Jonathan Groff is remembering a scene he shot for the upcoming HBO adaptation of The Normal Heart. It’s his only part with Julia Roberts, and he doesn’t have a single line with her.

“She plays a doctor and I collapse on the street, and then they take me into her office and she’s like, ‘He’s dying,’” the actor recalls. “So I didn’t get to act with her because I’m, like, hyperventilating on a stretcher. I was foaming at the mouth. She was probably all, ‘This kid is really going for it.’ But she was really nice, very chill, very undramatic and easy.”

The same could be said for Groff. The affable Pennsylvania native got his start on stage, nabbing a Tony nomination for his role in the 2006 Broadway musical Spring Awakening before battling it out with New Directions on Glee, portraying a young David Sedaris in the recent feature film C.O.G. and voicing Kristoff in Disney’s hot winter hit Frozen. Now the actor plays Patrick, the charmingly clueless lead in the new gay-friends-living-in-San-Fran series Looking, which debuts Sunday on HBO. Will there be foam? Probably, but only if it’s at a party.

Dallas Voice:  With Looking and The Normal Heart, it must be nice knowing that HBO is gonna pay your bills for at least the next year.  Jonathan Groff: Right? It’s great. But I’ve already been paid for those jobs in 2013!

In the Looking pilot’s opening scene, after a phone call interrupts a hand-job hookup, you tell your friends you worried it was your mom calling. Has your own mother seen the show?  My mom has always been really supportive of my work. When I was doing Spring Awakening she took bus trips of people to come and see the show — like, seriously, 40 people on a touring bus up from Pennsylvania. That was before she had even seen it, so she was shocked when she saw the sex and the nudity and me hitting Lea Michele with a stick, but she obviously enjoyed it … because there were three more bus trips after that! So she overcame the awkwardness of seeing my butt on stage, but ever since they cast me in Looking, the big question in my family has been: “Are they gonna watch it or not when it comes on TV?”

When I came home for the summer to Pennsylvania, I brought the pilot home on DVD and I just said, “I don’t know if you wanna watch this or not, but I feel like if you do watch it, you probably won’t wanna watch it with me in the room.” I think that really freaked them out.

Director Andrew Haigh, who also did the 2011 gay indie drama Weekend, has a knack for capturing real moments on camera. How do you think he’s accomplished that in Looking?  I could spend hours talking about Andrew Haigh. I saw Weekend and was like, “Wow, somehow he’s made a gay movie that feels universal.” I feel like whether [the characters] were gay or old or whatever, he could take any story and humanize it. He’s somehow able to catch really human moments.

I would be done with work some days and Frankie [J. Alvarez], Murray [Bartett] and I would look at each other and say, “Did we even act today?” It felt so much like us hanging out that it didn’t feel like we were “acting.” It speaks to the energy of his movie Weekend, and also to the energy of our show. It was really unlike anything I’ve ever worked on before.

For Looking, what’s expected of you sexually and what are you not comfortable doing on the show?  Seeing Weekend and knowing Andrew Haigh was attached to direct the show, I was like, “OK, I feel 100 percent comfortable to sign that nudity waiver and do absolutely anything.” I signed on before I really even knew him. I was like, “Yes, whatever, I’ll do anything.” Also, from years of being in Spring Awakening, I’ve built up a tolerance for acted intimacy. [Laughs] It doesn’t freak me out. And I don’t wanna give the story away, so I’m not gonna tell you the guy who I get naked with.

I hope it’s your boss.  I know! He’s cute, right?

What do you have to say about the show being called a “gay version of Girls” — which, by the way, I don’t think is accurate. Your boobs don’t look anything like Lena Dunham’s. I love that! It’s about a group of friends in the way that Girls is about a group of friends, but the tone, writing and acting are totally different. I do think if you enjoy Girls you will enjoy Looking, because it’s about relationships and trying to find love and your place in the world.

When Queer as Folk aired in the early 2000s, the show reflected how anti-hair the gay community was. Body hair wasn’t as accepted in the gay community as it is now. And Looking and Weekend really represent the zeitgeist in that regard. How do you feel about Looking embracing a more bearish man?  The more natural the body, the better. What they’re trying to do in Looking is show as many types of people and as many different types of bodies as possible, and also to stay true to San Francisco. And there’s a lot of facial hair and body hair in San Francisco!

How much do you relate to Patrick and what’s going on in his life?  At the first audition, because I knew Andrew’s work, I knew the lines but I didn’t do a lot of emotional preparation. I didn’t even say the lines out loud until I was in the room with him, because I wanted to find it in the moment. The first time I did the audition scene — the scene on the train where I meet Richie [Raul Castillo] — I started to get hot, but not in a sexy way. I got nervous-hot. I started sweating and blushing and I felt immediately, in the audition room, like, “I know who this guy is. I feel so connected to his social anxiety.”

What shows and films did you connect with as a gay man who was figuring it all out?  I remember being in eighth grade and seeing the billboards for Will & Grace — and then, there was so little gay anything. Not as much gay press, not as many out gay actors or gay material to watch, certainly not on network television. Any sort of shred of people being gay was like, “Oh my god, look at that. Is that me? Is that who I am?”

Even though I was not out in high school I knew that I was gay, and seeing that billboard and watching the show, even though I didn’t really feel like I was a Will or a Jack — I didn’t necessarily connect these characters to me — but just to see some gay characters on TV was great. It made me feel less alone.

As far as Looking is concerned, the story is very specific to Michael Lannan, our creator, and his group of friends. When they were auditioning for the show, they had pictures of his friends on the casting board to say, “This is what we’re looking for.” It’s very specific to his experience in San Francisco, but the gay community will hopefully still embrace the fact that there are gay people on TV in the way that I watched Will & Grace growing up.

Because of your role in Looking, how do you feel about possibly being the new poster boy for the gay community in the way Jack and Will were?  I feel so excited to be a part of a show that could potentially be a great moment for the gay community, because it’s crazy how few shows there are where there are a lot of central gay characters. As an actor you sort of become the face of whatever you’re working on, and I feel really lucky to be a part of this specific show because I believe in it so much as a television show. I’m so proud to be a part of this show.

Maybe Patrick will inspire some kid to feel less alone.  Yeah, totally. That would be amazing. I mean, that’s so cool. Yeah, that’s like beyond.

Jonathan Groff and Corey Stoll in ‘C.O.G.’

In addition to playing gay in Looking, you also played gay in C.O.G., an adaptation of David Sedaris short stories, and in The Normal Heart. Are you worried about being typecast? Or do you think that’s no longer a concern for actors playing gay roles?  I don’t know. Only time will tell. For any actor, gay or straight, being typecast is the biggest thing you have to work against. When I did Spring Awakening in New York, it took a long time of auditioning and then I moved to L.A. to prove that I could do more than that. For any actor, you have to put in a lot of work to continually show people and the industry that you can do more. So if the show gets picked up season after season — which, god willing, I would love; that would be amazing and I would want nothing more than that — I’m also ready to take on the challenge of trying to bust out of a role if I get attached to something specific. Call me in 10 years, but I feel so excited to just continue to challenge myself.

Can we get Lea Michele on Looking? I mean, you did Glee, so I think it’s only fair. Oh my god, I would love that! I showed her the first episodes when we took a little trip to Mexico recently and she watched them all again a couple nights ago with her mom. She’s so excited. It would be so amazing to have her on.

Everyone’s always saying how charming you are. But what sets you off? What makes Jonathan Groff a living hell?  Oh, good question. When we were doing Spring Awakening, I had to do this beating scene with Lea where I got really angry. In early days of rehearsals, Michael Mayer, our director, screamed at me, “Seriously, you’re like the most everything-happens-for-a-reason person I’ve ever met. What makes you angry?! I don’t get it.” And I said, “You, when you belittle people!” Which is what he was doing to me in that moment. He was thrilled to get a rise out of me and help me finally get there. But here’s what I hate: I hate when you’re at dinner with a couple who are dating or married and they belittle the other person in front of a group. It’s like nails on a chalkboard. I fucking hate that.

And you just dropped the F-bomb, so I know you really mean it.  Yes! I hate that! I honestly hate that in any way, shape or form — with teachers, directors, producers, friends or anyone that is talking down to me or down to someone I’m with. It really pisses me off.

As a Disney fan, was the experience of voicing Kristoff in Frozen surreal for you?  Yeah, I was Mary Poppins for Halloween, I was Peter Pan, and I grew up watching Disney movies.

Do you see “Let It Go,” the film’s musical climax, being done by drag queens?  Oh my god, completely. It’s like a gay anthem. I asked [composers] Bobby [Lopez] and Kristen [Anderson-Lopez], “Did you intend to write a gay anthem? Because I’m pretty sure you did.” They’re like, “No; honestly, when we wrote that song we were like, ‘We’re gonna go to a room right now and get really in an emotional place and write this ballad that is just true and honest and real.’” So they did not intend to write a gay ballad — but I think they did anyway!

You worked with Julia Roberts and Mark Ruffalo on Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of Larry Kramer’s 1985 play The Normal Heart, which airs in May. I mean, no big deal or anything.  I know, it’s crazy. When The Kids Are All Right came out, I saw that movie three times in the movie theater and I’m so obsessed with it and I’m so obsessed with [Ruffalo] in it. Like a crazy person, I cut out a picture of him in a magazine — I’m not even kidding, I never do this — and put it on my dressing room mirror because I was like, “That’s who I wanna be.” I just admire him so much. And so in the movie I play his ex-boyfriend …

Do you get to kiss him then?  We don’t have a kissing scene, which is unfortunate for me, because when the movie starts, we’re already exes. But just to be in the same room as him was a big deal for me. I fell deeper in love.

What do you hope the takeaway will be for this generation of LGBT people who didn’t experience the AIDS epidemic like those who saw The Normal Heart in its original form?  We did this scene on the beach on Fire Island where they had a white party and there were extras in their early 20s — and I’m 28 — and we’re all having a blast, and then it hit a bunch of us as we were standing there that, in the story of this movie, most of these people are dead. Just standing there on the beach with everyone dressed in white being so young and having a great time — and thinking about what happened to the people who were dressed like this — it was really powerful and really affecting.

For my generation of people watching the movie, hopefully that will be like, “Oh, this was like us. This was us 30 years ago.” It’s so amazing that they’re turning that play into a movie, and that young people will watch. Maybe people who aren’t as connected to the AIDS crisis will be able to look back and see themselves in these characters and pass the story onto the next generation.

Looking premieres on HBO on Sunday at 9:30 p.m. Below is a clip from the first episode.

‘Dallas’ returns — without Hagman, but chock full of juicy back-stabbing

BATTLE OF THE BOYS | Josh Henderson and Jesse Metcalfe provide the man-candy and the emoting in ‘Dallas,’ a trash-wallow that’s nevertheless irresistible.

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  | Life+Style Editor

There’s bound to be a lot of channel clicking in North Texas come Monday night, as RuPaul’s Drag Race on Logo and TNT’s reboot of Dallas both return for their season premieres — Ru’s sixth, Dallas’ third. Then again, that’s what DVRs, and rebroadcasts, were designed for.

It’s sad you’d even have to make a choice, as both appeal to a similar demographic: Those on the prowl for juicy scandal and shade-throwing bitchiness. And all due respect to the queens, but they got nothin’ on those Texas Ewings.

Dallas was always the king of the nighttime soaps, a potboiler that set the standard, if not the high-bar, from trash TV, which its back-stabbing, conniving, sex, violence and oil — both the kind you dig for underground at the kind you rub all over men in bed. Ooh-la-la. RuPaul has the race, but Dallas has the racy.

That’s apparent during the opening scene of the season premiere, where John Ross (Josh Henderson) — equally evil son to the late, not-so-great J.R. (Larry Hagman, who died midway through filming of Season 2) — steps on screen as ripped and slimy as a serpent, but with sultry bedroom eyes that could meld gold. He’s a transparently devious fella, but it’s so hard to concentrate when he’s talking and his shirt is off. That must be what distracts everyone from his cousin Christopher (Jesse Metcalfe, bearded and butch), son of Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) and even his mom Sue Ellen (Linda Gray, off the wagon again). When John Ross’ lips are moving, he’s lying, but damn if you don’t like looking at those lips.

That’s the appeal of Dallas, of course — always has been: Pretty people doing ugly things that, no matter how preposterous, are as addictive as popcorn. The plotting has never been more outrageous, and most of the time depends on short attention spans. Everyone is continually willing to forgive everyone else, no matter how egregious the transgression. Ellen (Jordana Brewster) betrays Christopher? No prob — one insincere apology later, and he’s turned over the keys to the safe to her, even though she’s now in the pocket of Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval). John Ross tries to destroy you — and is still trying — no worries, we can still work together. Just as long as we stare down each other menacingly before the commercial break.

Having just concluded a 13-episode marathon of Season 2 of House of Cards, in which a man schemes to usurp the White House from under the American people (and will commit murder to do it), it’s difficult to take faking a land survey in order to frack on Southfork too seriously, but there you have it. This isn’t lofty television, but it is damned entertaining.

Part of that appeal derives from the dialogue, which cannier than the plotting and character development. There are knowledgeable references to Dallas geography (half the fun is playing Spot the Landmark), pop culture (jokes about Duck Dynasty) and Texas life (an understanding of the prominence of barbecue feels more lived-in that most shows set in the state). So what if we have a new, evil character who does everything shy of twirling a moustache and laying a damsel on the train tracks? There’s enough laying of another kind to make up for it. And John Ross’ eyes. Remind me to give him my debit and PIN. I’m sure he’ll be responsible with it. You can just tell he really likes me.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition February 21, 2014.

Bravo’s Madison Hildebrand brings his empowerment message — and killer smile — to Dallas

Since he started appearing on Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing six seasons ago, Madison Hildebrand has become one of SoCal’s most recognizable — and hottest — gay Realtors. Heck, we’d buy a condo from him even if it was in the Towering Inferno.

Hildebrand will be in North Texas Friday hosting a seminar to empower people to reach their successes. But we spent a few minutes asking Hildebrand about his career, the reality TV shows he likes and who inspires him.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

Dallas Voice: What are the pros — and cons — of being a reality TV star?  Hildebrand: I feel very blessed to have been with Million Dollar Listing since the show started six years ago. My business has grown exponentially over those years, and although a lot of that can be equated to hard work, drive and strategy, I cannot deny that the exposure from the show is a key factor in my success. Being on TV, people feel like they know me, and that comfort level with my skillset can translate into leads and clients when they are looking for a Realtor.

In regards to liabilities, it can feel like an invasion of my personal life. Being on a reality show, you feel a certain level of vulnerability all day, everyday. Even when the cameras stop rolling, people recognize and stop me wherever I go. It can be fun and comes in handy when I need to get a ‘hard to get’ reservation but not so great when you want to have a secret date!

Are there moments you recall from the show where you felt it was edited to give the wrong impression about you?  Here’s the thing: Yes, the producers can edit the show, but they can’t invent content. If a person says something horrible or acts a certain way, they lived that. I think the show has done a very accurate job of capturing each of our personalities. That being said, after six seasons, there’s been plenty of times that I cringe at mannerisms I use. Also, there are times when things happen you don’t anticipate — like when Heather threw a drink on me — and you can’t control or calculate your response. There’s always that element of risk when filming a reality show.

What reality TV shows do you watch?  There was a moment when I watched way too much reality TV. Being in the Bravo family for so many years, I’ve grown to know and become friends with many of the other personalities on different shows, and so I felt inclined to watch everything on Bravo so I could see what was going on in their lives. I’m friends with Jeff and Jenni on Flipping Out — love their show. I’m also friends with Patti on Millionaire Matchmaker and even went on her show to be matched up! The final straw came when I found myself indulging in Love and Hip Hop on VH1. At that point, I got rid of my TV and knew it was time to get some new hobbies.

Which career do you prefer: Realtor, TV star or public speaker?  I love having a diverse career and keeping things interesting. I also have a book, a candle line, am a brand ambassador for eSignature giant DocuSign … and am always looking for the next project.

While each of these areas is intertwined, I am really loving producing these seminars. It’s been very rewarding to provide a platform to educate and inspire agents all across the country. At our last event in Houston, we had an agent stand up at the luncheon and confess that she had been on the brink of giving up on a career in real estate, and after attending the event, she felt inspired and energized to push through and build her business. Hearing that was the best part of the day.

Who inspires you?  I’m surrounded by inspirations — my family, mainly. My father worked tirelessly and strategically to reach the pinnacle of his industry.  Watching by example, he instilled a fierce work ethic in myself and my two brothers. And my grandparents, who are still wildly in love after so many years. I’m still searching for that, but know not to accept anything less.  I try to also find inspiration in my surroundings, making a home with beautiful things that inspire me and also making time to be outdoors and in nature. I’m really blessed to live in one of the most gorgeous and inspiring places in the world.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition April 25, 2014.

Two iconic actresses with ties to Dallas— Morgan Fairchild and Lindy Gray — will strut the red carpet at the USA Film Festival

LADIES FIRST | Two TV stars who made Dallas famous, opposite: Linda Gray, for playing its booziest wife, Sue Ellen Ewing, on ‘Dallas;’ and Morgan Fairchild, a real-life native who started her career here and still credits the late gay actor Larry
O’Dwyer as her greatest influence.

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  | Life+Style Editor

When you get a half-hour to chat with Linda Gray — who, for 36 years, has been intimately associated with our fair city as the star of both iterations of the juicy nighttime soap Dallas — there’s one question you have to ask:

“How do you like having a lesbian bar here named after your most famous character?”

“Been there!” she happily chirps about Sue Ellen’s, the gay nightclub along the Strip.

“You know there’s also a gay bar named JR.’s?” I add.

“Been there, too! And with Larry!” she says, referring to the late Larry Hagman, who played Sue Ellen’s evil spouse, J.R., on the series. “I mean, how can you not go?”

She’s been there during both of its lives, in fact: The first on Cedar Springs, and the new one along Throckmorton. “I went to the new, remodeled Sue Ellen’s — it’s bigger!” she gushes.

For those who’ve followed Gray’s career, her enthusiasm comes as no surprise. Since the new Dallas began airing two years ago on TNT — it’s now on its third season, which recently wrapped its third mid-season and will return in August for seven more episodes — Gray and her fellow cast members have  frequently been in Texas, filming the series. And rather than hole up in her trailer or retreat to a fancy apartment, she’s been visible out in the community.

“I love the community,” she says. “I have friends that I met there in 1978 and [are still friends]. So when you know them, and you have those times off, Larry and I would go down there. There are so many beautiful people in the Dallas community that are so generous — they really care. I become infused in the community because I love it. The people couldn’t be nicer or more generous.”

She’s a fan of The Family Place, the Dallas Children’s Theater, and just saw her first show at the Dallas Theater Center (she recently saw its production of Fortress of Solitude and “I was amazed by it. I’m a big architecture fan and that was my first time in the Wyly”). Last year, she attended her first DIFFA gala, as well as the Burgers & Burgundy foodie fundraiser.

It’s for all those reasons, and more, that Gray is being honored Saturday at the USA Film Festival with a special sit-down chat and tribute. So what will it be like?

“I have no idea what I’m doing!” Gray laughs. So expect the unexpected.

Certainly many folks there will be expecting to hear about Sue Ellen, though … and how she has developed her over 30-plus years.

“When people ask me about Sue Ellen, I say, ‘Haven’t we all [changed]? Have you changed in 20 years?’ I didn’t want the writers to write the old Sue Ellen — it’s got to be different. But she shows us all that we are frail, all different, all individuals. That’s the cool part of playing that character. It’s what keeps Sue Ellen interesting.”

But in the recent cliffhanger, she’s started drinking again and was trapped in a burning Southfork. What accounts for such drama?

“I’ll give you the phone number of our writers — you can call them,” she jokes. “These sneaky little critters huddle up in their room in Los Angeles and [create all these scenarios]. I give them applause, though. They have so many people to pull into one 41-minute segment of time. They look at the whole picture of 15 shows and think, ‘How are we gonna end this season?’ We’re given a script maybe a week ahead [of filming], and we freak out! Then we call each other and say, ‘Do you know that there’s a ménage between us?’ For us, it’s quite interesting.”

As for Sue Ellen’s relapse, she’s sanguine.

“I thought I did that well in the ’80s — kind of a been there, done that,” Gray says. “But hang on — there’re things that will happen that will answer your questions. You just have to wait ’til August!”

Gray became a Dallas booster by choice; Morgan Fairchild — who likewise will be feted by the USA Film Festival, on Friday — was born to it. The native cut her teeth on the boards of Theatre 3 and other area companies back as a child.

“I will always be grateful to [Theatre 3 co-founders] Jac Alder and Norma Young for seeing the potential in my sister, Cathryn and me, and for giving us such wonderful training and so many fabulous opportunities as very young girls,” Fairchild says. “And we also owe a huge debt to Larry O’Dwyer, who passed away recently, who was a great mentor to us and a great inspiration as an actor. I stood in the wings and watched Larry onstage every night in every play we ever did, just to learn from him. He was a master class in acting. I was once asked who I’d worked with that I thought were the best actors. I mentioned a few, but then said, ‘I was fortunate to work with a two comic geniuses: Robin Williams and Larry O’Dwyer. And Larry O’Dwyer is every bit as great.’”

Fairchild probably has more stories than she can count about her training here, including working on the film shoot of Bonnie & Clyde (she was just 16!).

“Once, I attended a cast party for the movie and became rather depressed about the lifestyle I observed. [The next day I told O’Dwyer], and Larry gave me the best piece of advice I ever received. He said,

‘You can always walk out on reality.” And that’s what I’ve done my whole life, I just create my own, and that’s how I’ve survived in show biz.”

And survived she has. From her breakthrough on the nighttime soap Flamingo Road to full-on comedy, including playing Chandler’s transgender father on Friends, Fairchild has earned the right to live her own reality.

“I love doing comedy, and yes, it is much harder than drama,” she says. “I had a great advantage when I got to Hollywood, in that they had very few ladies who looked like me and could do comedy. For a while, I was doing a lot of the comedies [Happy Days, Mork and Mindy, Newhart] and then I got Flamingo Road, where my character’s reason for existence was to come between the two star-crossed lovers. I only had eight scenes in a two-hour movie pilot, but I ad-libbed my way through them and made them funny … and I made her a funny bitch. I did that with every series I ever had: took a one-dimensional bad guy and made her funny, so the audience was waiting to see what the hell she’s going to say or do.”

Of all her roles, though, she does have a favorite: The bitchy (surprise) fashion maven Racine on the short-lived series Paper Dolls.

“When Len Goldberg called and asked me to do her, I said, ‘She has no storyline. All she does is talk on the phone.’ It was a series about the fashion biz, and Racine was basically Eileen Ford run amok. So Len said, ‘I promise, if you’ll do the show, I’ll give you a storyline.’ Finally I said OK, but when it came time to do these boring scenes where she’s just barking orders on the phone, I just started ad-libbing these sarcastic things, figuring they’ll cut around them. But they kept them! And when it came time to do the series, they began to write to my weird sense of humor. They had a writer on staff — Donald Roos — who got what I was doing and wrote to it, and we had so much fun! I hope they have some of those scenes in the reel clip at the festival!”

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition April 25, 2014.

Matt Bomer and Mark Ruffalo in ‘The Normal Heart,’ which debuts Sunday on HBO.

In the early 1990s, the AIDS crisis and gay rights became a suitable subject for popular entertainment, with movies and TV shows like Longtime Companion, Philadelphia, And the Band Played On, Tales of the City and plays like As Is, Angels in America and Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart. The last one, coming from the most vocal (and often least well-liked) voice of the gay activist movement, was probably the most polarizing. It never had a Broadway opening, and certainly was not adapted for the screen.

By 2012, the world was ready again to deal with Larry Kramer. The play opened on Broadway (and won a Tony), and now — about two decades after the artistic fever-dream of AIDS dramas — the filmed version hits the airwaves.

HBO’s The Normal Heart has been a long time coming, but in some ways, it feels like it didn’t skip a beat. The opening segment, a trip to Fire Island cribbed from the structure of Longtime Companion, is both familiar and new, what with all the full-frontal nudity and explicit sex you wouldn’t have seen 20 years ago. And even better, many, many openly-gay actors in the major roles (among them: Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, Jonathan Groff, Stephen Spinella and B.D. Wong). Not gay, but going full-bore as the hero anyway, is Mark Ruffalo as Ned Weeks, Kramer’s stand-in for himself. Ned’s something of a Cassandra, clucking his disapproval at sexual freedom (or is it recklessness?) even before there’s any indication of the coming plague.

Ned meets a doctor (Julia Roberts), who is even more of a downer than he is, insisting that gay sex is killing men and getting them to stop is the only course of action. But “promiscuity is the principal political agenda” of the gay movement in 1981, Ned argues — you can’t just get them to stop. And yet, you have to. To fail is to accede to genocide.

I’m sure The Normal Heart will shock a lot of mainstream sensibilities, and even some disdainful gays who think it both negatively portrays gay stereotypes and glamorizes anonymous sex. But you can’t have it both ways — you can’t complain about its authenticity and chastise it for being too accurate. But HBO made the formula work one year ago, with its equally shocking biopic about Liberace, Behind the Candelabra, and it won every award in the book. There’s no reason to think lightning won’t strike twice.

The weakness of the play (and now the screenplay, also by Kramer) is the character of Ned, who is so impassioned yet unlikeable that you can’t stand how he’s both right and gets in the way of getting the right thing done. In some ways, it takes amazing self-possession for Kramer to portray his alter ego warts and all, while balancing the competing issues sex-as-liberation and sex-as-death. It was equally hard for the gay community in its day.

But what sustains such competing currents is the emotional tremors the story sets off, which start nearly at the start and rarely waver for the next two hours. The first appearance of a character with Kaposi’s sarcoma … the first realization a seemingly healthy, young, blossoming young man is infected and will die … the first closeted person who could make a difference cowering out of fear of the social stigma … well, even if you did not live through those days, you can’t help but feel rattled. And it leaves you feeling that way.

That’s a ravaging effect of a movie, that sincere, wet-eyed shiver of the inevitable horror faced by a generation of gay men. Director Ryan Murphy (Glee) never lets up. He doesn’t want you to relax. You might miss the urgency, a feeling of self-preservation that, since the invention of the AIDS cocktail, hasn’t been as pressing in society, even the gay community. In many ways, this is the perfect symbiosis of Kramer and Murphy: The radical and the populist. Indeed, if it weren’t already widely known as The Normal Heart, I know the perfect title for it: American Horror Story.

Emmanuel Tobias

Out Dallas designer Emmanuel Tobias made it onto TV last week as one of the finalists for Project Runway. Well, sort of. He wasn’t a “final-finalist;” he was a pre-final finalist, one of three designers who seemed to make the cut (he appeared on the run-up special before the season premiere) only to be dismissed before any real competition got started.

And here’s the thing: If you saw his designs, and especially those of some of the contestants who sailed through, you had to ask yourself (as I often do on that show) “what were they thinking?”

But Tobias has a good attitude about it all, and agreed to relive his brush with Heidifame. Maybe next season!

Season 13 of Project Runway continues tonight on Lifetime, at 8 p.m. (and you can re-watch Emmanuel’s episodes on the recap at 7 p.m.).

Dallas Voice: Sorry you got booted so soon! Describe your design style. What’s your signature look? Emmanuel Tobias: I have always leaned to being a conceptual designer, but as of late, I have been combining my avant garde aesthetic with a more approachable, ready-to-wear style. I would describe it as an artistic approach to wearable clothing. My signature look combines powerful masculine and feminine qualities and always has an interesting textile, whether it is texture, specialty dyeing technique, or print.

Did you know you still had to prove yourself before you were “officially” on the show?  The production company prepped us with a timeline after the “semi-finals” casting interview, so I knew that I still had more hurdles to jump.  The process for this was truly a rigorous one and the timeframe/turnaround times that we were required in every aspect were very fast. I had a good feeling I was going to make it to the finals, but I knew that I would have to prove myself to the Heidi, Zac and scary Nina. What you saw on TV was probably less than 15 seconds of my finals casting, but I was in that room for quite some time.  Nina and Heidi were very nice, and I thought I had sold them on putting me on the show, but we now know Nina didn’t care for me! I gave so much conviction in every question they asked with smiles coming back and forth from the judges and myself … except for Zac. Zac was the one that was so hard on me, but on TV he seemed easy-going.

It never feels good to lose, but you said you’d quit your job to compete. Did you get it back? Was it worth it?  Leaving everything on hope was a huge leap of faith for me. I broke my lease to my loft and I literally had my close friends help me pack/move in one day! I let my bosses know what was going on, and yes, I was absolutely mindset on leaving my jobs. Luckily, my teaching position was on break for the summer, but I did end up losing my main job. I was devastated after I had filmed and I was dreading the day that it aired because I know Dallas was rooting for me and I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. I was more bummed that I didn’t get to actually compete because, let me tell you, I would have slayed bitches! I do not regret the risk I took, and I think it was worth it because of the exposure. Even though I didn’t make it on the actual cast, people have been reaching out to me with encouraging words from all over the world — Austria, Malaysia, China, Paris, Latin America, the U.S. and of course DFW. I had no idea people would react this way to my small time on runway. I don’t think I lost in any way, I feel like this has pushed me to focus solely on my design career.

You don’t need to be catty — though you can be! — but frankly, some of the designers who made it through had terrible stuff. Do you agree? Care to name names? Or did you feel the judges had an impossible task?  When I first met all the designers, we all made our rounds and checked each other out. We had about an hour to prep before the finals casting and I observed everyone’s personal style, design aesthetic and personality. I knew that many of them would simply be put on the show because of their strong persona, even though their design level was not up to par, and others [would be cast] simply because of the demographic/category they would fit in. The judges did have an impossible task of choosing because the deliberation actually lasted about two hours. What you didn’t see is Heidi actually telling us that they had to call Tim Gunn in to help them make the final call because they couldn’t come to a conclusion.

Did you make friends on the show, however briefly? Learn any good advice? Any good vibes from Tim Gunn or Heidi or Zac Posen?  I made friends with Samantha Placensia (from San Antonio) at the semi-finals casting on forward. We both rooted for each other and were hoping we both made it. I also clicked really fast with Sandhya, Hernan, Sean Kristine and Mitchell. Tim Gunn was a true gentleman and had nothing but encouraging words for me. Heidi is a walking doll in person and I couldn’t find a crack on her skin. I’ve always been a fan of Zac’s [designs] but he didn’t give me good vibes.

What’s up next for you? Continuing to design stuff?  I still dream of the day that I can show at New York Fashion Week with my own women’s/menswear collection, but for now I’m starting with something small.  I’m really excited for the launch of my bowtie line, Emancandy, which is  available online at Emancandy.com.  Eventually, I would love to add men’s shirtings, underwear, accessories and other items found at a haberdashery — except fun and quirky.

What’s gay on the upcoming season of cable and network TV? Quite a lot

THAT’S CAPTAIN QUEER TO YOU | Andre Braugher plays a gay cop on ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine.’

With summer 2014 unofficially over, the fall TV season is just starting to heat up. There’s a silver lining to trading in lazing in the sand for lounging on the sofa: There are plenty of programs with LGBT characters to tune into right now. Which returning shows and series premieres should be on your gaydar? Peep this shortlist of inclusive shows that run the gamut of genres to make your picks.

Utopia (Fox). Basically Big Brother outdoors, this reality series has 15 strangers create a community, includes a single “polyamorous” woman. But the cast can change throughout the run, so gays may be added. Just premiered.

Dancing with the Stars (ABC). Out judge Bruno Tonioli is back, and castmembers this season include gay fave Antonio Sabato Jr. Series premieres Sept. 15.

Red Band Society (Fox). While there aren’t any gay teens (so far) on this dark dramedy, at least we have out actor Wilson Cruz’s Kenji Gomez-Rejon, an openly gay (and of course sassy!) nurse. Sept. 17.

The Big Bang Theory (CBS). TV’s No. 1 sitcom stars openly gay four-time Emmy winner (and native Texan) Jim Parsons as the infuriatingly funny Dr. Sheldon Cooper. It moves this season from its secure spot on Thursday to anchor Mondays. Sept. 22.

Modern Family (ABC). LGBT fans of this consistently hilarious and award-winning comedy (It just won its fifth consecutive best comedy series Emmy, tying the record) are finally satisfied that Cam and Mitchell tied the knot (it wasn’t long ago that the Internet was making a big deal about why the couple never kissed on camera … until they did), so it’ll be interesting to see how they manage married life, for better or worse. Sept. 24.

Scandal (ABC). If you can get past Olivia Pope’s annoying, incessant bawling, you might find solace in the ruthless-but-fragile Cyrus Beene, this fictional White House’s first gay chief of staff. Brush up on the previous WTF seasons online and on demand before Season 4 bows. Sept. 25.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox). Andre Braugher won an Emmy nomination playing the uptight, openly gay leader of a misfit police precinct for the first season on this single-camera sitcom starring Andy Samberg. The show moves to Sundays this season. Sept. 28.

The Vampire Diaries (The CW). Gay fans of this show were more than eager to sink their teeth into news that a recurring gay character was coming to Mystic Falls toward the end of last season. Tune in to unravel more of Luke Parker’s mystery when the series returns for its sixth season. Oct. 2.
American Horror Story: Freak Show (FX). Out producer Ryan Murphy continues this reinvents-itself-each-season miniseries about the supernatural, this time set in a circus. Expect lots of gay stuff. Oct. 8.

The McCarthys (CBS). Recently out Ronny McCarthy is about to accept a teaching job in Rhode Island when his basketball-coach father asks him to stay in Boston to be his new assistant. The rest of his tight-knit, sports-loving siblings cry foul over the decision, and hilarity is expected to ensue. Early reviews for this freshman series are mixed, but at least we get to watch Laurie Metcalf and Joey McIntyre for a half hour. Oct 30.

Series with no announced premiere dates:

One Big Happy (NBC). From executive producer Ellen DeGeneres comes this hopeful comedy about two tired-of-being-lonely-and-single best friends — one a straight guy, the other a gay girl — who decide to have a baby together. Of course, this new relationship gets trickier when the straight guy unexpectedly falls in love and marries … just when his gay best friend announces she’s pregnant with his child.

Shameless (Showtime). Ian Gallagher gets around. In Season 1, the fire-haired high school student was shtupping Kash, the owner of the convenience store at which Ian works … until juvenile delinquent Mickey Milkovich came along. Ian cooled things off with Kash as his relationship with Mickey heated up, then Ian started fucking Lloyd and Maxine and … oh, who cares, the kid’s adorable and the show is awesome. Early 2015.

Parks & Recreation (NBC). Openly gay comedian Billy Eichner’s Craig Middlebrooks didn’t get major screen time when he was introduced in Season 6, but his penchant for blowing things out of proportion and over-the-top delivery should be put to better use as the mocku-comedy enters its final, seventh season. Early 2015.

Undateable (NBC). A surprisingly funny comedy scheduled as a midseason replacement, this sitcom provides eye candy in Chris D’Elia’s Danny Burton and ample gay jokes from David Fynn’s Brett, the refreshingly very-average-Joe resident bartender.

— Arnold Wayne Jones and Mikey Rox

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition September 12, 2014.

Our Hollywood Issue comes out Friday, so we thought we’d do a lead-up with celebrity interviews from the world of entertainment. Kicking everything off? Our Chris Azzopardi‘s piece on the controversial new streaming series Transparent, where he talks to star Jeffrey Tambor and associate producer Zackary Drucker (herself MTF). 

When a show makes its mark on society, it’s more than just TV — it’s history.

In 2014, we met Maura, the protagonist of the brazen, boundary-breaking Transparent, a dramedy centered on a 70-something male-to-female’s journey in coming out to her family. Written by Jill Soloway (Six Feet Under) and produced by Amazon with a standout lead performance from Jeffrey Tambor, the show is being heralded as an Emmy contender for its authentic look at trans life.

Dallas Voice: Jeffrey, what drew you to the Maura character?  Jeffrey Tambor: I was coming into Los Angeles from my home in New York, and I was doing a talk show and my representatives, who are tremendous, are always on the lookout for really good things. They sent me this script by Jill Soloway, and I got off the plane — I had about a 15-minute drive to my hotel — and by the time I got to the hotel, I had read this. I called them and I said, “I’m in, I’m in, I’m in. Let me meet Jill.”

Jill and I met the next day — we had a great meeting — and then that afternoon I saw her movie Afternoon Delight, and I called her again. You know, in the pilot, I don’t have that big of a role, but you could just see how beautiful that family and their dynamic was. You could see that Jill was after big themes, but the people were so real, so authentic and so accessible, and so I just said, “I’m in.”

Even though your role is slight during the pilot, your presence is massive.  Tambor: Thank you. The key scene, I think, in that pilot is around that table. That barbecue scene — I could watch that on a loop for the rest of my life. I remember when we were filming that and every face I looked into was just filled with genius and light and quicksilver moods. It’s really a real coup of casting.

With so few representations of transgender people in the media, and trans visibility being at the forefront culturally, what kind of responsibility did you feel to Maura and to the trans community?  Tambor: A huge responsibility. I had nervous self-tappings on my shoulder the whole time. I don’t think I have been as nervous as when I did the scene when I had to come out to my daughter Sarah [Amy Landecker]. I was shaking, and not because I was nervous about being good, or nervous about being talented, or nervous about learning the lines — I wanted to do it right. I turned to Jill many times during the making of this, and to Zackary and [co-producer] Rhys Ernst many times, and said, “This is big. This is huge.” You would feel it at times and think, “This is so much more than all of us put together. This is a big movement.”

Zackary Drucker: Jeffrey brings a tremendous amount of humanity to this role, and from a very internal place without falling into stereotypes or tropes of other representations of trans people that we’ve seen. I think that this show is a huge step in the right direction, and as a trans person, I have a lot of hope, actually, that there are many more to come. This is one big step for bringing trans people into pop culture and into television and film.

What’s been problematic about the way transgender people are portrayed in the media?   Drucker: First of all, trans people have been relegated to victims or villains. Then, outside of that, there are a few more recent examples, but they’re still being written by cisgender people. The bigger problem in our representation is that it’s not inclusive to the trans community; [there’s a lack of] collaboration with the trans community to create a more authentic portrait. But this production, from the bottom up, was very inclusive. I mean, one of the first things we implemented was a “trans-affirmative” action program to hire as many trans people in as many departments as possible, which created a certain amount of spontaneous authenticity. I think that Jeffrey was really able to immerse himself in our community as an incredible cisgender ally. We’re lucky to have Jeffrey Tambor on our side.

Jeffrey, how did working with three consultants from the trans community, including Zackary, affect your performance?  Tambor: The humanness. The authenticity. The vulnerability. You know, I had a real awakening, because I thought the exteriorization actually took care of itself. Zackary and Rhys were very helpful in that area, but most of the work was, as Zackary mentioned, interior. I had to really plum them of their [experiences]. I would ask very deep questions, and then I had to ask myself deep questions. I had to go within.

This is not a walk in the park. You either have to go into yourself or you don’t. I mean, I had to find out where the Maura was in me, and there is a Maura in me and I love her. It’s been one of the most incredible experiences.

This was not in my technical bag of tricks. I had to dig a bit. But I had such wonderful help and such allies, and there was no one on the set with crossed arms and raised eyebrows. People were really in my corner and that meant a lot. I was scared with a capital “S,” I gotta tell you, especially the first week or so.

By the way, I have to give kudos to a splendid actress, Alexandra Billings, who plays my friend Davina — a great actress and also a member of the trans community. We had so many scenes together and she helped me so much — not by anything she said overtly, but by just playing together in the scene. Everything was so delightful and I learned so much. Her stamp of approval meant so, so much to me. One of the most generous performers I’ve ever worked with.

Were there any concerns, Jeffrey, that people would have trouble taking you seriously as transgender after dealing with gender identity issues in a more comical setting during Arrested Development? Tambor: I don’t mean to be glib about this, but I was so protected by Jill and Jill’s direction, but mostly her writing, which is so authentic. People’s first sentence to me is, “I didn’t know what to expect,” and the second sentence has some praise, like, “… but I thought it was so fantastic.” So I am sure there is skepticism from some people, or, “Oh, that’s the guy from Arrested Development and he’s gonna be a [trans person],” but we just keep saying, “Take a look at it.” And people are really [finding it] praise-worthy.

When we opened Transparent in Los Angeles, that line where Maura says, “All my life I’ve been dressing up as a man,” the audience broke out into applause. It was unbelievable. So I didn’t have that [concern]. I felt very protected by the writing. That’s some good writing. I mean, there’s good writing and there’s good writing, but this is off the charts.

What do you hope non-trans people take away from Transparent?  Tambor: I would like for them to take away something Jenny Boylan [a consultant to the production] said to me the other day — to all of us, rather. She said, “For the first time, I’m looking at the television screen and I’m seeing myself represented.” I hope that is what people feel. But I also hope that we go away and play our part in the dispelling of ignorance, prejudice and phobias. I hope we shed light on a subject that needs light, love and warmth.

Drucker: One of the amazing things about the trans community is how diverse it is. It’s a tremendous challenge because we’re starting from zero and creating representation, and it may be impossible to truly represent everybody, but we hope that this show expands everyone’s notion of difference. We all have trans people in our extended families — that’s increasingly something I hear in conversation — and this show has the power to really change everyone’s perceptions of trans people. We’ve been so invisible, and I think America’s ready.

— Chris Azzopardi

The best (new) things on television in 2014

A BANNER YEAR FOR TEXANS | Matthew McConaughey, above left, won an Oscar in 2014, just as he was winning acclaim for the cop drama ‘True Detective;’ Baylor alum Allison Tolman gained fame (and Emmy and Golden Globe nominations) for her breakout role in ‘Fargo,’ below.

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES

Television — as we have come to know it — is both the greatest and the worst medium.

With streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime … even YouTube) and premium cable, we have literally every imaginable moving image at our fingertips. And yet we are still inundated with Real Housewives franchises, homophobic hillbillies and Nancy Grace. Shows on broadcast networks that 20 years ago would not last a season due to low ratings are now considered hits as eyes move elsewhere.

TV is both intimate and grand: There are things on the small screen that the movies are just not capable of coming close to (Game of Thrones), while at the same time, “Gee, there’s nothing on” is still a familiar refrain.

It doesn’t have to be that way. While 2014 was the year we lost Colbert, we’ll regain him again in 2015, albeit in another format; not so of David Letterman, which is an historic loss.

For this year’s best-of list, I have done something I have never done before: Retired recurring favorites that would otherwise dominate the list (Key & Peele, House of Cards, RuPaul’s Drag Race, the aforementioned Thrones), and limited myself only to new series — those that began their runs or completed their first seasons in 2014. The distinguishing characteristics of many of the finalists? Darkness loomed. And there was a lot of gay out there to soak in. And short seasons (six to ten episodes) seem to be the way to go. Working our way toward the top:

10. Vicious (PBS) … or as I like to call it, Absolutely Fagulous. Old pros Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen (both openly gay in real life) play a pair of bitchy queens in their twilight years, lusting after the clueless straight boy next door and spewing venom with every line. It’s old-school broad comedy, written by American Gary Janetti (whose tweets, by the way, are some of the best out there) but with that Brit bitterness that goes so well with camp.

9. Transparent (Amazon Prime). Although the style of this half-hour streaming series is a bit lopy, the premise alone — that a man in his 60s (Jeffrey Tambor) comes out as transgender and deals with the fallout from his selfish adult children — is practically earth-shaking, especially when its portrayed with such clear-headed respect for the LGBT community.

8. Garfunkel & Oates (IFC). The most unexpected delight of the year for me was this single-camera, low-budget comedy about two novelty folk singers (Kate Micucci, Riki Lindhome) who intersperse their actual lives with musical numbers that reveal the awkwardness of life for women in their late 20s. It’s a funnier Girls, and you don’t have to look at Adam Driver. (Garfunkel & Oates would be on the list anyway, if only for the touching song about marriage equality, performed with puppets.)

7. Gotham (Fox). Every year, there’s a series that gets the hell promoted out of it in the summer and when it debuts doesn’t live up to the hype. Gotham is the exception — a show that sustains itself with increasingly intriguing glimpses of how a pubescent Bruce Wayne was transformed by the murder of his parents into Batman. Although it focuses on the upright destined-to-be-commissioner Jim Gordon (Ben Mackenzie), it’s the villains who pull your focus: The Penguin (a creepily sociopathic Robin Lord Taylor) and Fish Mooney, played with brio by Jada Pinkett Smith.

6. Fargo (FX). Billy Bob Thornton’s return to TV was a far cry from his sitcom days: This sorta-remake, sorta-sequel to the Coen Brothers crime drama. But it was Texan Allison Tolman — in a breakout role as a pregnant sheriff who’s smarter than all the men around her — that wowed us in this tale of revenge and the depths a psychopath will go.

5. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO). After his successful subbing for Jon Stewart in the anchor desk of The Daily Show in 2013, wide-eyed Brit John Oliver got his own comedy-news show on the edgy network, and proved lightning can strike twice. Oliver’s deadpan delivery in interviews frames his outraged ranting in the “can you believe the shit going on in the world?” segments. You laugh … then you cry.

4. The Normal Heart (HBO). The second of three HBO shows that consecutively made the list, this screen adaptation of Larry Kramer’s searing stage play about the early days of the AIDS crisis and the activists who kept the faith was almost difficult to watch sometimes because the pain and desperation was fully palpable.

3. True Detective (HBO). While Fargo plumbed the banality of evil, True Detective was more of a philosophical cop drama, as two miss-matched investigators — clear-eyed Woody Harrelson and Zen-like Matthew McConaughey — get brought back together to revisit a murder that seemed to have been solved 20 years ago. But was it?

2. The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (PBS). Ken Burns’ seven-part dissection of the lives and influences of three relatives — Theodore Roosevelt, his niece Eleanor and her husband (and cousin) Franklin — was something we don’t see much anymore on broadcast television: Appointment viewing. (The last time we felt this way was probably Burns’ The Civil War in 1990.) For one week, we couldn’t wait to spend the night glued to our sets watching this compelling portrait of America in microcosm.

1. Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey (Fox). Fundamentalists’ heads almost exploded when the network owned by Rupert Murdoch aired this 13-part science series — an updating of the late physicist Carl Sagan’s seminal 1980 series — which, lo and behold, takes it as an article of faith that the universe is far more complex and wondrous than we can fully fathom. Focusing on thinkers as well as ideas, host Neil deGrasse Tyson escorted us from one side of the cosmos and back with stirring visuals and smart (but not jargon-y) explanations of life (and light) as we know it … so far.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition December 26, 2014.

When Kennedy Davenport’s drag sister Sahara passed away, she was devastated. But she turned her pain into resolve, following in Sahara’s stilettos on ‘Drag Race’

SHANTAY YOU STAY | Dallas queen Kennedy Davenport will make an in-person appearance at The Brick following the season premiere of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Monday.

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  | Executive Editor

Chiiillllllle!”

For all her glamour and runway style, at heart, Kennedy Davenport is just a country girl from Oak Cliff. Now in her 30s, she still lives in the same house she grew up in since before adolescence. She drawls her words with an unmistakable Texas twang. And she tells it like it is — behind all those wigs and eyelashes, she’s authentic. And she wants everyone to know it.

And soon everyone will, when she makes her national debut as one of the contestants on the upcoming season of the hit Logo competition series RuPaul’s Drag Race.

“I’m an open book and I don’t have any secrets — my whole life is a journey and the greatest thing that I experienced being on Drag Race was being able to share my truth … as an entertainer, and just as a human,” Kennedy says. “My life has not been a crystal chandelier. Dressing up and being beautiful is one thing, but when you crack that shell open and say, ‘I am human too,’ that’s the best thing that could happen.”

We don’t know officially how Kennedy fared on show, but considering that she’ll be making a personal appearance at The Brick this Monday following the season premiere, it’s reasonable to assume she didn’t get bumped Week 1. Indeed, her decision to do the show was a great leap of faith.
Kennedy was stationed in Miami after she enlisted in the Navy (she served three years, while Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still the law) and remained in Florida until she returned to Dallas to make drag her career. Being on the show definitely interfered with that.

“It’s a commitment,” she concedes, “especially if this is your livelihood. It was definitely a sacrifice. I took on this great responsibility after losing my father, and I am the guardian of my sister who is mentally retarded. Before I went on, I had to be sure she was OK. I was like, ‘Lawd, let’s make sure that water bill’s paid!’ My plate was really full so it was more than just to compete — it was my life.”

The question she kept asking herself was: Did she still want to perform to make her living? “Can I make this profitable for my future?”

And it almost didn’t happen at all. In many ways Kennedy would not be here had it not been for a tragic death that affected many Drag Race fans, but personally devastated Kennedy: The passing of a former contestant, Dallas’ Sahara Davenport.

“Kalexis is my drag mother and founder of Davenport; Sahara was my drag sister,” Kennedy explains. “To me, she was more than someone in the community — it was like she was my sister for real, like she was my blood. I was already doing drag before her, but it was like two little girls growing up. [When she died] it was more than just a loss; it hurt me dearly because I couldn’t get to her.”

Sahara’s own appearance on the show turned out to be a motivating factor for Kennedy.

“We both had the same goals as far as female impersonation goes — she wanted to be Miss USofA and I wanted to be Miss Gay USofA. I was really in my own world when she auditioned and in survival mode — trying to keep these bills paid, honey! So I didn’t have time to audition.”

After Sahara made it on, however, “she was like, ‘Sister, you gotta go ahead and put your tape in, girl.’ So to finally put forth the effort  — I said, ‘Sahara I’m gonna do this for you.’ To step in the same footsteps as her and compete was just so surreal.”

What was most memorable about it?

“Chiiillllllle!” she says again. “You couldn’t put it into one word, honey — it was challenging, hard, fun, emotional, sooo tiring. It was like I was in high school all over again. I had to act and sing and dance and pull things out of me I haven’t used in years. It was fun to learn the different aesthetics and different styles of drag. I developed real relationships with a lot of the girls — some I was closer to than others, but I think we all developed great relationships.”

One thing she was especially happy about when she arrived? Santino Rice was off the show as a judge.

“I can truly say I was slightly relieved Santino wasn’t there. Santino was a person who did not know about the art of female impersonation. So to have experienced Carson [Kressley] and Ross [Mathews] was exciting.”

Equally exciting is how being on the show is a way of paying it forward — as Sahara did for her.

“Having that platform [] to express my journey gave me every opportunity to tell the whole world who I am and what I’ve been through,” she says. “This is the chance for us to be leaders, to let the younger generation know whatever they are going through? We’ve already been there.”

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition February 27, 2015.

As the out Tony nominee ends his fourth season on Girls, he talks co-stars, sex scenes and what it would take to get him back on Broadway.

Andrew Rannells won’t soon be living down the handjob he gave to a boy in a bathroom. Thanks to Lena Dunham and the other writers turning out sharp social commentary and anecdotal writing for this current installment of HBO’s Girls, now finishing up its fourth season, the theater-turned-TV star didn’t just speed-race his way through a handy — he’s danced, de-clothed and continued to lambast the fogey fashions of Dunham’s Hannah. And god bless him for it.

— Chris Azzopardi

Dallas Voice: So, Andrew, what’s up with Marnie getting all the sexy sex scenes on Girls?  Andrew Rannells: I know! She gets to do all sorts of crazy shit this year and poor Elijah just gets an awkward handjob in the bathroom. We’ll see if we can’t fix that.

I like seeing the gender roles being subverted, though. Most people would expect to see the gay guy getting rimmed, not Marnie.  That is true. Lena’s pushing boundaries all over the place!

How did you end up with a bigger role on the show, especially this season?  Well, I was really excited: Last season was the first season that I got to be a full-fledged regular on Girls. They’ve always done such an amazing job of making me feel like a full part of that team, but last year was the first season that I really got to just be devoted strictly to them. In the past, during the first season, I was still doing The Book of Mormon, so with the second season, I only got to do half of it. And then we started The New Normal, and then after The New Normal ended I got to do the back end of the third season. They’ve always been so welcoming, and I’m just thrilled to be a full-time cast member over there.

I mean, literally, I don’t think it was even 20 minutes after they had made the announcement that The New Normal was canceled that I got phone calls — one from [executive producer] Jenni Konner, one from [executive producer] Judd Apatow and one from Lena Dunham — all saying, “Please come back and join us.” Even though they had started prep for their season, they worked me in very quickly. Again, I’m so grateful to them and so touched that they include me. I feel really at home with that group.

Which of the Girls characters would you most likely hang out with in real life?  Lena and I actually hang out a fair amount, and Allison [Williams] and I hang out a fair amount as well. Particularly during this past year, [Allison and I have] kept in very close contact over our hiatus, which is great. Character-wise, I feel like it might be a Marnie situation, I think. I know that she’s a little high-strung, but, particularly now with her new sexual awakening, I feel like she would be a fun girl to hang out with.

The one you’d least likely hang out with?  I might have a hard time with Jessa. Yeah, that would be a tough hang for me.

Because she pisses in the street?  Well, the pissing in the street — yeah. I would’ve run. If I were Adam, I would’ve just bolted. Like, “See ya, lady!”

What is your relationship dynamic with Lena off set? Do you guys dance like you do on the show?  Well, we’ve had a few opportunities to dance together, which is pretty fun. The fascinating thing about Hannah vs. Lena is that Lena is so obviously wildly driven and incredibly talented, and she doesn’t possess any of that insecurity or lack of direction that Hannah has. I learn so much from working with Lena in terms of just being motivated and making things happen for yourself, and also being confident in yourself and trusting yourself. She’s very inspirational in that way. It’s so funny to me that she plays this character that she created that is such a fucking mess. Completely opposite of herself.

So my hanging out with Lena is super fun but she’s also so encouraging. She’s really just very inspiring to hang out with in a great way. Sometimes I look at her and all that she does and all that she accomplishes and I’m just very let down with myself and annoyed with her. [Laughs] Like, “God, I do nothing.” I feel so lazy sometimes. I’m like, “I should’ve written a couple of books by now. What am I doing with myself?!”

That Iowa rager this season – please tell me those are your moves.  Oh, hell ya. One-hundred percent. I’m embarrassed to say it’s not choreographed. That is all free style, my friend. That’s, like, me in high school.

Elijah is very impulsive and decides to follow Hannah to Iowa this season. What’s the most impulsive you’ve been about a situation in your own life?  In 2004 — is that right? — I had this job. I was working for a company that made Pokémon and all these anime cartoons; I was doing voiceovers for them and directing a couple of series for them. It was good money. It was a steady 9-to-6 job. It was basically an office job, even though I was in a recording studio and I was doing something that was on television. And it was fine, but it was soul crushing. I knew that I wanted to really pursue the musical-theater thing, which is what I had moved to New York to do. One day I just walked into the office and I quit. Everyone was so baffled because it came out of nowhere, but I had just reached a point where I was like, “I can’t fucking do this anymore. I just can’t do it.” And everyone was like, “This is a terrible idea; you’re making a huge mistake.”

What made you go with your gut?  It was building inside of me for a long time. I just knew that I was unhappy, and I would go to see a Broadway show and I’d be like, “Goddammit! That’s what I came here to do!” And I felt like I was letting myself down by not seeing that through, so yeah, I just did it. But that felt nuts to me. That was probably the most impulsive and, you know, ultimately rewarding thing I could’ve done.

How long were you without a job?  It was not that long, but it felt horrible because I was unemployed for about eight months. I was just auditioning and tripping around, so it wasn’t a horribly long time. When you don’t know what the end is, though, it feels pretty dangerous.

Elijah makes himself right at home in Iowa. Having gone from Nebraska to New York, and also to Los Angeles, is it easier being gay in a big city?  I was out but not fully out at 19. I wasn’t really in any kind of scene in Omaha, so I don’t know what it was like to be an adult in that city. All of my adult gay experiences have been in either New York or Los Angeles. I mean, it’s certainly easier to find your people and your group in a larger city.

My mom now does a lot of work with the Nebraska AIDS Project and PFLAG in Omaha, and I’ll go back to visit and go to events, and there’s a great community planted there. She’s really dove in during the last couple of years and started volunteering with all these different organizations. I go back and meet young gay people who live in Omaha whose parents are maybe not as accepting and they always say, “Your mom is so great; she’s kind of like our mom.”

Why do you think Elijah is so pivotal this season, especially to Hannah?  His return into that friend group was a little tentative. [Hannah] found out he had sex with Marnie in the second season, so she kicked him out of the apartment and then he sort of disappeared. Then, coming back, I think Hannah took a second to really welcome him back into the group, but I feel like this season really solidifies his place in this friend circle.

Where do you hope to see Elijah in the next season?  I would love to see him get a real boyfriend. I want to see him in a real relationship, and I want to see how he would function if he actually fell in love with someone. I think we’ve seen him flounder about and kind of half do a relationship, but I want to see him fully in a relationship. Someone is in love with him; he’s in love with someone else. I wanna see what that brings out in him.

You’re starring alongside Anne Hathaway in Nancy Meyers’ The Intern. I understand the role was originally written for a woman; so, in the film, are you gay or straight? Does your sexuality come up at all?  It doesn’t really come up. Even written as a woman, there was nothing really about her personal life in it, so in making the switch to a man, it was actually shockingly easy because there was no personal detail there. The requirements [for the role] were really just sort of play off Anne and Anne’s character, so it really wasn’t about any kind of personal background of mine. So it didn’t really come up. You tell me when you see it.

And you and Anne are besties now, right?  It’s funny: I had met her a bunch of times during The Book of Mormon because she had done a movie called Love & Other Drugs with my co-star from that, Josh Gad, so I knew her before, which made it super relaxed and easy. I mean, she’s extremely talented and intimidating in that she’s worked with a bunch of people and she has an Oscar, but I also knew that she was just a very cool girl, so it made it easy doing scenes with her, knowing her a little bit. It was great.

When I started, I was in rehearsals for Hedwig [on Broadway last fall] as we were filming that. During my first night I received this ridiculous flower arrangement, and I was like, “Who the hell is this from?!” And it was from Anne Hathaway. Class act. Very nice that she remembered.

What kind of role would get you back on Broadway?  I loved my experience with The Book of Mormon and doing a new show, but ahh… you know, I’m certainly… I’d be very excited about doing a revival. Umm. There is… yeah. Yeah. I’d be very excited to go back. Yes. I’m looking forward to finding that project and getting back on Broadway.

I feel like you’re strongly suggesting something here. I don’t know!

Well, something’s in the cooker and I like it.  Well, good!

Legendary septuagenarians Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin reunite 35 years after ‘9 to 5’ for Netflix’s latest edgy series, ‘Grace and Frankie’

Lily Tomlin is watching Jane Fonda weep. Releasing a steady stream of waterworks, Fonda pauses slightly to collect herself before answering this question: Why have gay men forever revered older women even when the rest of the world — and Hollywood — have not?

“I find the question so moving that it makes me cry,” says Fonda.

It’s one revelatory moment among many during this candid conversation with the 77-year-old Fonda and 75-year- old Tomlin, who appear together in the new Netflix original series Grace and Frankie. The beloved pair play modern golden girls forced to start anew after their husbands of 40-plus years (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) drop a big truth bomb: They’re divorcing their wives because they are in love with each other. It’s a great if long-overdue reunion for the actresses, who first worked together in 1980 (along with Dolly Parton) to put misogynistic men in their place in the feminist comedy classic 9 to 5.

Will Dolly make a cameo on Grace and Frankie? During our freewheeling interview, the two longtime friends talked about the possibility of a 9 to 5 reunion on their new series, but they revealed plenty more, too. Fonda opened up about her own experiences dating high-profile gay men, one of whom proposed to her. Tomlin recalled the time she lashed out at Chita Rivera.

But first, the crying.

— Chris Azzopardi

………………………………………………………………………………

SAM & LILY & JANE & MARTIN | Netflix’s ‘Grace and Frankie’ reunites four superstars with criss-crossed careers: Sam Waterston and Fonda co-starred on ‘The Newsroom’ while Martin Sheen and Tomlin shared screen time on ‘The West Wing.’

Dallas Voice: You’ve both addressed aging in Hollywood, and this show deals a lot with aging as well. Historically, gay men — we love our Golden Girls, we love our Chers and Bette Midlers. Why do you think, despite Hollywood’s reputation for agism, there has always been a place for older women in the gay community?

Tomlin: I may be terribly wrong and cutting my tongue out for this: It’s like, well, we’re women of a certain age, and maybe we’re considered more audacious.

Fonda: I find the question so moving that it makes me cry. I had never thought of it before, and it makes me so moved. I think Lily put her finger on it just now. Older women tend to be more audacious; they’re bigger and bolder and, god knows, gay men love big and bold, right?

Does it go any deeper than that, do you think?

Tomlin: It’s like Lypsinka. I knew he was from Mississippi, and he’s like a little kitten in a way; his hair is so soft and pale red, and he’s got a big, high, very white-skinned forehead. When I first saw Lypsinka, I could just see this little boy — 4 or 5 years old in Mississippi — growing up around all these Southern women, and my family’s Southern. I just saw him seeing through them and into their hearts. He saw the women being oppressed and being pigeonholed and how they act kind of audaciously just to free themselves. I just could see that little boy, and he satirized women’s behavior so brilliantly — all the stuff, the travails they have, and I just wept when I saw him because he was so brilliant. I think there are hinges between those two things. … Jane is wiping tears from her eyes.

Fonda: How she said that — that he sees through them into their hearts. And also: The notion of surviving.

Tomlin: And him making up this incredible creature who’s just so much fun to watch, and yet it’s painful. I could feel his little boy pain all through those years.

You both have had a profound influence on the LGBT and ally movements. Can you share a moment in your lives as LGBT activists and trailblazers that stand out as particularly memorable to you?

Fonda: Campaigning with Harvey Milk in the Castro District in San Francisco for Prop 6. He was the most joyous. He was like Allen Ginsberg. He was always smiling and laughing, and he was beloved and he was funny — the most lovable person. I was so happy when I was with him. And it was just so much fun going into those gay bars with him — oh my god!

Tomlin: I never got to meet Harvey Milk. I knew [LGBT historian] Vito Russo; he was my good friend. I used to exchange so many stories with him. I was up on the Strip one night when I was not on Laugh-In yet. I was unknown and a woman that I was friends with who was a publicist had brought Chita Rivera to meet me, and Chita talked with a Bronx accent, and she’s talking really fast and you don’t know what she’s saying. I kind of zoned out for a minute because I could hardly understand her at that point, and then I suddenly heard her say, “purse nelly.” First she had said my “boy dancers” and the skin on the back of my neck bristled up, and that’s when she said, “purse nelly” and then I just went ballistic. I said, “What did you say?!”

You lashed out at Chita Rivera?

Tomlin: I lashed out! She said, “I dunno! WHADISAY?” I said, “You said, ‘purse nelly.’ I wanna know what that means. What you meant by that!” “I don’t know. Whadisay? Pursenelly? Personally.” She was saying “personally”!

Fonda: “Personally!” [Laughs]

Tomlin: And I didn’t even cop to it. I was so embarrassed. I just doubled over laughing and fell on the floor.

Fonda: I just went to my 60th high school reunion. I went four years to an all-girls boarding school, and in the days leading up to the reunion I kept wondering, “God, I wonder whatever happened to Pat Johnson?” Because everyone in the class knew that Patty Johnson was gay, or at least we thought that she was. But no one talked about it. Not even among ourselves. Nobody ever said anything. And she was at the reunion — there were only four of us at the reunion.

Tomlin: Four out of the whole class?! Awww.

Fonda: And Pat Johnson was there, with an oxygen tank, mind you. It was the first time she’d been out to dinner in five years because she had some allergies to chemicals. And there she was with her wife! An amazing woman violinist! And I thought, well, this is very great. I never ever would have imagined back in the day that Pat Johnson would be able to get married to her lady friend.

Let’s talk about your friendship with each other. Was it smooth sailing from the very beginning?  Tomlin: Yeah, we hit it off right away. I was so excited when Jane came to see one of my shows way back in the day …

Fonda: … This was pre-9 to 5!

Tomlin: … Yeah. I was all excited. She came backstage and was very complimentary, and then next thing I knew…

Fonda: … I was offering her a role in 9 to 5, which was originally going to be a serious movie until I saw Lily’s one-woman show called Appearing Nightly. I decided I didn’t want to make a movie about office workers until she was one of them. And it had to be a comedy. It took me a year to convince her and Dolly to be in it! During that year we kind of saw each other because we’d be talking about different ideas and stuff, and so we kind of became friends before 9 to 5.

What is different about working with each other on Grace and Frankie compared to when you worked together 35 years ago? 

Fonda: We’re together more! I mean, it’s four months, almost every day for almost 15 hours, which is a real treat for me. You know, Lily is very unusual. She has a real funny bone. So, watching her take on not just the scripts but life is a pleasure.

Tomlin: Thank you, Ms. Fonda!

After doing the first season of Grace and Frankie, what advice do you have for women who are romantically involved with a gay man?

Fonda: Try to stay friends. You know, it happened to a friend of mine when I lived in Atlanta, and she told me about it and it was very hard for her because she really loved him a lot. Because she loved him, she was able to understand that he needed to become who he really was, and they remained very, very close friends and they still live in the same building. I think that’s the way to do it.
Compassion, empathy, love, understanding — we need more of it.

Have either of you dated a gay man before?

Fonda: Oh yes! Oh my god. When I was young, I was the female that gay guys wanted to try to become heterosexual with. A very famous actor who’s gay — and I will not name names — asked me to marry him. I was very flattered, but I said, “Why?” This was 1964. And I mean, he wasn’t the only one. It’s very interesting. And I lived for two years with a guy who was trying to become heterosexual. I’m intimately acquainted with that.

Did that come to mind as you were shooting this show, where you are married to a gay man?

Fonda: [Laughs] No! Not until you made me think of it right now.

Lily, have you had any similar experiences?

Tomlin: No, I didn’t; but I had girlfriends who dated gay guys in college and they couldn’t understand why so-and-so didn’t, you know, take them into their arms and sweep them away. Because they danced together so well! They were beautiful, tall blonde people! They were just kind of breathtaking, and they did make a nice looking couple, but that was about as far as it would go — looks. I had a girlfriend and we got into a big fight about being gay when I first moved to New York. She was watching Lust for Life and Anthony Quinn, who is so macho as Gauguin in that movie, and I said something like, “Look how macho this guy is — he’s unbelievable!” She said, “If I were gay, I’d beat down the door of the nearest psychiatrist.” I said, “If I fell in love with my refrigerator, I’d give it lamb chops!”

Netflix has really been a pioneer in reaching beyond LGBT stereotypes and being LGBT inclusive, and it’s done it again with Grace and Frankie. How do you feel about the state of gay characters on TV as a whole? And what is it about this platform that allows Netflix to tell LGBT stories without getting gimmicky or exploitative?

Tomlin: I think it’s been a long time coming. Although, it’s happened because of so many things that have gone before, and this culture has changed. Large parts of the culture have changed. Not the culture as a whole. You know, there’s still a lot of …

Fonda: … Homophobia. I lived in the South for 20 years, and, unfortunately, homophobia is all too alive and rampant, but because there are so many more gay men and women in mass media and they’re very lovable — and more and more people are coming out — Americans know somebody who’s gay and lesbian. Once that happens, it’s a lot harder to remain homophobic.

Did you ever think that gay marriage would be a reality in your lifetime?

Tomlin: No, I did not.

Fonda: I didn’t either.

Tomlin: I mean, I began to suspect. The last generation or two that have come along, they so demanded to be visible and they’ve taken for granted everything that the gay community had fought for so hard for a long time — it was wiped away from their minds that they were not accepted or not loved. I mean, they may have known it but they didn’t own it.

Fonda: I agree, and I’m very optimistic. I found what Justice Kennedy said — that it should be looked at as sex discrimination — cause for optimism.

I remember when this show was announced, everyone was really hyped about you two getting back together, but they were also hoping for a Dolly Parton cameo. Has that been discussed as a real possibility amongst showrunners?

Tomlin: Well, it’s been discussed because so many people inquired about it and thought about it. Of course, Dolly’s a good friend and the three of us really like each other and we’ve been friends all these years, but because Grace and Frankie is set apart, we want to establish our identity before we think about dragging the 9 to 5 life into it.

Fonda: It’s a different style. It’s a different animal. We wanna keep it that way. For now, anyway.

What do you think your 9 to 5 characters, Judy and Violet, are up to these days?

Fonda: Violet’s probably heading up a Silicon Valley company! Maybe we’re married

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition May 15, 2015.