Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish might be the washed-up star of her own show, but it’s her trusty hairdresser, Mickey Deane, who makes her look like one.

For two seasons of HBO’s sharp reality-show satire The Comeback, Mickey Deane — played by Robert Michael Morris — has endured the plights of humiliation right alongside Valerie herself … all in the name of friendship. From Season 1’s cupcake fiasco to Val’s tasteless improv riffs after his cancer diagnosis during the second installment, the manny-pack-wearing Mickey’s seen it all as has “Red,” as he affectionately calls her. She once walked in on him in bed, sprawled out, naked.

As the entire 21-episode series (so far) hits DVD, the Kentucky-born Morris phoned to chat with our Chris Azzopardi about how that emotional finale was “all in Lisa’s eyes,” his former career as an English teacher and why he decided to bare his butt during the show. And no, he doesn’t do hair.

Dallas Voice: I just watched the season 2 finale for probably the 15th time. I can’t shake it. Those last few minutes are some of the most brilliant minutes in television history. What was the vibe of the cast during the finale shoot?  Robert Michael Morris: Well, I was away for most of it. The hospital scene — they were shooting other stuff, but I was just waiting in the hospital bed, so for me it was very easy. Just lie there! We didn’t wrap that last scene until 4:20 that morning, so it was quite late in the day. I keep using the word “honest,” and that’s the thing I always appreciated about the show. It seemed to me to always be so honest, and the relationship between Lisa and I really crystallized in that last moment.

That’s true. By the end of the second season, Valerie realized what really mattered.  Oh, she always realized it. It’s like you can’t walk away from a sick child, and when Mickey, who had always been with her forever — 25 years longer than her marriage — seeing him on his way out became the priority for her. I have got to get to him. I have got to get to him. When she gets there and finds out it was the medication and he’s just a frightened mess in the bed — and she’s comforting him for a change — it really revealed the depth of their relationship. A lot of times we skate on the surface, and it’s only when the rubber hits the road that you can plumb the depths of what it is.

Nothing has been confirmed regarding a third season of the show. And seeing it took nearly 10 years for a second season, it could be that long before we see a third. Did the uncertainty of the show’s future make shooting this past season emotional?  Oh, I don’t think that played into it — it certainly didn’t play into it for me. You hear actors say a lot of times they have to be in the moment, and if you’re playing something for effect, it rings false. HBO has always loved the show and they were incredibly supportive of this show. Well, the current HBO people. I think the first HBO person, whomever he was, didn’t get it. It was also, at that time, the only show that HBO had where there was a female lead. They were all male leads. And [the show] is about the business, which for them was uncomfortable.

I feel pretty confident in saying that there is gonna be a third season. There will be a third one, I’m almost positive. Lisa has already said in many interviews there will be, and [co-creator Michael Patrick King] has said there will be, and HBO has said we’re leaving the door open. It takes a while to write something of quality, and I think that’s what they’re doing now. But they know what they want. Michael said to me, “We wanna make sure the next time is something worthwhile, that it’s something that will be what people wanna see about Valerie.” Lisa’s already said, “I’m not done with that character.” I don’t know where she can go: Oscar? Tony?!

You must have been over the moon when Lisa recently received an Emmy nomination for best actress in a comedy.  Oh, I was thrilled to death! I emailed her right away and she got right back to me and said, “Thank you.” But this gives you an idea of the kind woman she is: She said, “… however, it’s bittersweet because they overlooked two other Michaels.” She’s a neat lady.

How would you like to see the relationship between Valerie and Mickey evolve during a potential third season?  Oh, I don’t know. She’s seen me bleeding, she’s seen me naked, she’s seen me laid out on a hospital bed scared out of my mind. It can only go up from there!

When your character was first developed, how did you find the Mickey that we came to know by the end of the second season?  I know that Michael and Lisa did not want a screaming stereotype. Mickey was just a human being and he didn’t think of himself as gay. Remember in the first episode he says to her before he went to the restaurant, “Did you tell Juna I was gay?” Now anybody with half a brain — or Stevie Wonder, who can’t see — knew he was flittin’ around. But he was just being him, so he couldn’t imagine why Juna would think that he was gay. And the look on Lisa’s face — her take on that was, I thought, masterful. So he finally decides by the end of that season to come out, and he’s a little long in the tooth to be coming out, but he decided to come out. He brings his boyfriend Robert to the party and kisses him on national television — or on the reality show, anyway — and Lisa’s only comment is, “Well, that’s out of the way.”

Can you elaborate on exploring Mickey’s sexuality during the series?  I think it’s a common thing — well, maybe not common, but it’s not so extraordinary that men who do have a sexual preference for men don’t believe anybody knows. I’ve heard stories of people who were major celebrity types who like to crossdress but they don’t think anybody knows it. I mean, what exactly makes somebody gay? Now they’re all saying it’s the way you talk. Other people say it’s the way you walk. In high school, one of my dearest friends was effeminate, and effeminacy is not the same as being gay. In fact, there was a marvelous Saturday Night Live skit with Dana Carvey where his kids all thought he was gay because he liked to do interior decoration and arrange flowers, and maybe he had a bit of a stereotypical speech pattern, but his own children thought he was gay, and he wasn’t.

It’s a very complicated issue, and what I liked about it [on the show] was that they didn’t want the same kind of approach to it that is often used. Right away it goes to the humor and not necessarily truth. Then after he comes out or announces on the show that, in fact, he is [gay], I think there’s a kind of freedom in him, but you’ll notice he doesn’t noticeably change. He doesn’t start wearing loud colors. I mean, he really likes jewelry, but what’s wrong with a little personal adornment?

In what ways are you and Mickey alike?  Well, I do like wearing jewelry, although I go through phases. [Laughs] A lot of the jewelry that was used in the show was mine. I brought it all in. In fact, as we started doing the show, I bought a lot of stuff on eBay.

Do people expect you to know a lot about hair?  Yes, they do … and I don’t! I ran three college drama departments, and I was always pretty much a one-man band, so I had to learn how to do everything. I had to learn how to sew — not well, but at straight seaming I’m a whiz. And I don’t really know fabrics that well — I’m not really a tailor. I also had to learn how to do wigs. A lot of Mickey is based on some people that I know who were hairdressers who helped me out when I was teaching college. When we first started the show, I would sit and watch Lisa’s hairdresser style and do her wig for her. I watched what he did and I just tried to do that without screwing up what he had done. I think actors observe. You have to watch people, and I think you have to know what you’re doing or it rings false. I take it as a great compliment that people think I was or am a hairdresser, but it couldn’t be further from the truth!

Have you ever worked with a Valerie Cherish-type?  No; most of my life, I was primarily a teacher. I taught for over 25 years. I had no intention of doing show business because I had done very little television. I did one under-5 [a character who has fewer than five lines of dialogue] for All My Children so long ago that Erica Kane still had her communion money, but I was working there after the teaching thing ended. I was working for my brother and Michael King called me on Sept. 19 — I remember the date — and he said, “I’m working on a show with Lisa Kudrow, and there’s a part I think you would be really right for.”

You see, I had known Michael for a long, long time, and my brother would always say to me, “Why doesn’t he get you on Sex and the City?!” I said, “Look, I would never ask a friend for anything like that. To me, a friendship is more important than a job. He knows what I can do and when he can, he’ll do something.” And I told that to Michael. He said, “Oh, I could’ve used you, but it would’ve been a one-shot deal. I wanted to wait for something with more substance.” So I went to the audition for The Comeback and then the call-back and, to my surprise, I was hired. It was my first audition in Los Angeles; I hadn’t worked with anyone else. This is really my TV baptism.

Looking back at the show’s two seasons, what scenes that you shared with Lisa stand out most to you? I mean, aside from that naked scene where your behind is on full display — because I imagine that’s a real highlight!  I said one time in a meeting, “Everybody thinks that he’s a bottom anyway, so that makes perfect sense to me.” That’s what people think being gay is all about. “Top or bottom? Which one are you?”

But let’s see. I always love her when she’s befuddled, when you can see her mind racing, like, “What do I do? How do I make this work?” And then, of course, that last scene I really love. And that’s all Michael and Lisa, I must tell you. They know what they want and everything is in Lisa’s eyes. When she looks at you, she’s bare. She’s a very, very honest performer.

How did that help you connect with her during that final hospital scene?  There would be no scene if that wasn’t there. I remember one time someone asked Meryl Streep that [same question] when she did Sophie’s Choice and she said it was always in Kevin [Kline] and Peter MacNicol’s eyes — that’s where she got her performance. And I think that’s true for me — it was all in Lisa’s eyes. You’ll notice, if you watch it for the 16th time, because there are no cameras around, she’s not performing. To me, it was an amazing thing.

— Chris Azzopardi 

‘Supergirl’ arrives later this month on CBS.

The 2015-16 TV season is well underway. What to watch for the discerning gay viewer? Pop the corn, grab a blanket, and cozy into your favorite couch cushion for this selection of new-season shows featuring LGBT characters we can root for.

The Real O’Neals (ABC). The O’Neals have a secret; several of them, in fact … not the least of which is 14-year-old Kenny’s confession that he’s gay, which he reveals in front of his family’s church congregation. Upfronts for the Martha Plimpton-starring vehicle show initial promise, but it’s the boycott by the American Family Association that should seal the deal.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (The CW). Scheduled to premiere midseason, this series from out exec producer Greg Berlanti will feature a host of familiar superheroes, including at least once crossover character, Sara Lance, a bisexual crime fighter who died on sister series Arrow, but is now resurrected through the mythical Lazarus Pits as “White Canary.”

Grandfathered (FOX). John Stamos, who ages just as well (or better) than a fine wine, helms this half-hour comedy about a still-in-his-prime bachelor who finds out he’s a father— and grandfather — all in a day. Kelly Jenrette stars as his lesbian assistant restaurant manager Annelise.

Rosewood (FOX). Private pathologist Dr. Beaumont Rosewood (Morris Chestnut) runs a for-hire autopsy agency with his toxicologist sister Pippy (Gabrielle Dennis) and her DNA specialist fiancé Tara (Anna Konkle) in this Wednesday-night crime procedural.

Faking It (MTV). Aside from making the most popular boy in school, Shane, gay, and giving him a hot MMA-fighter love interest, Duke, to make out with, Faking It also warrants your DVR space for introducing TV’s first intersex character, Lauren, who will spend this season handling the fallout of being outed by her ex-boyfriend … who we can only hope meets the business end of a choke hold.

Supergirl (CBS). There’s no indication that there’s anything LGBT about this new series initially, but it’s produced by Berlanti, so there’s high-flying probability that we’ll see some diversity soon. It’s already well on its convention-shattering way with Mehcad Brooks (True Blood) playing former Daily Planet photographer James Olsen.

Best Time Ever With Neil Patrick Harris (NBC). Doogie has turned his perennial hosting prowess into a full-time gig (at least for a short season of shows) with this primetime party that will feature comedy, music, games and more.

Modern Family (ABC). Tensions are rising for semi-newlyweds Cam and Mitchell, the latter of whom admitted to losing his job at the end of season 6. Can the oddest gay couple on TV weather the storm? Yeah, probably, and hopefully with a lot of hilarity.

How to Get Away With Murder (ABC). Sure, Connor Walsh is a stereotype of a gay man who uses his sexuality to his advantage, in How to Get Away With Murder — but, really, who’s complaining? Less shirt, more sex, please.

Todrick (MTV). Quadruple-threat Todrick Hall — the YouTube sensation famous for his full-scale productions of gay-ified Disney covers — gets his comeuppance in this docu-series about (what else?) the making of said full-scale productions.

Nashville (ABC). Nashville’s Will Lexington is the hottest gay cowboy since, well, you know.

Undateable (NBC). The highly underrated multi-camera comedy will return to NBC this fall for its third season (didn’t know about the first two seasons, did ya?) with — get this — all-live episodes. As if that’s not enough to pique your curiosity, perhaps bear-tastic bartender Brett can.

The Walking Dead (AMC). The body count will continue to rise in season 7 as Rick Grimes and group try to strike a survivable balance within the fallen Alexandria society while facing a new threat of the Wolves. Here’s hoping that boyfriends Aaron and Eric get a decent storyline before one of them bites the dust.

Out actor Jussie Smollett as the gay scion on ‘Empire.’

Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn (VH1). When you can’t bear witness to an actual train wreck, Couples Therapy is a solid stand-in, this season starring Drag Race alums Carmen Carrera and Adrian Torres.

American Horror Story: Hotel (FX). Lady Gaga stars as Elizabeth the Countess, bisexual owner of the Hotel Cortez, which will see its fair share of LGBT characters pass through its door, including roles filled by Angela Bassett, Denis O’Hare, Finn Wittrock and Cheyenne Jackson.

Empire (FOX). Gay heir to the Empire Records fortune, Jamal (Jussie Smollett) gives Empire its LGBT street cred, but it’s family matriarch Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) who makes us want to put those jams on repeat every single week.

Younger (TVLand). You’ll have to wait until January to catch the second season of TVLand’s sleeper-hit Younger, starring Sutton Foster as a 40-something divorced mother pretending to be a 26-year-old editor’s assistant, but it’s worth scheduling on your DVR in advance. The indispensable Debi Mazar provides the show lesbian realness while too-tempting tattoo artist Nico Tortorella’s eye candy gives us something to suck on.

—Mikey Rox

First airing 30 years ago this month, the made-for-television movie An Early Frost — a film about a young, closeted gay lawyer diagnosed with AIDS — was the first film ever to address the then-controversial subject matter. At the time, little was known about the disease and the virus which causes it. Gay men dying of AIDS were all too often considered little more than statistics. Many of those afflicted were outcast from their friends and families. The provocative landmark film dared to give the mysterious and frightening “gay” disease a human face.

As a made-for-television movie, the production faced certain challenges. For example, the film required the support of sponsors, many of whom did not want their products associated with the topic. And broadcasting the movie on NBC, a commercial rather than cable network, meant that network censors would scrutinize its content. When it aired, 34 million people watched the film, earning it the night’s no. 1 spot. More viewers watched An Early Frost than that evening’s installment of ABC’s Monday Night Football.

Gay Hollywood couple Ron Cowen and Dan Lipman, men who would later executive produce the NBC television series Sisters and the Showtime series Queer as Folk, wrote the teleplay. Censors demanded that they balance their presentation, meaning essentially that the movie should not condone homosexuality. It was a time when most gay characters in television and movies had been limited to comedic supporting roles. Cowen and Lipman rewrote the teleplay at least 13 times, carefully negotiating revisions with censors with every round, to preserve as much of their story as possible.

It was nominated for 14 Emmys, winning four, including for Lipman and Cowen’s teleplay. The film enlightened and educated the viewing community both to AIDS and to homosexuality. An Early Frost blazed a much-needed trail for similarly-themed movies which followed including 1990’s Longtime Companion and 1993’s Philadelphia. As the writers demanded, the movie ends with hopeful symbolism. Rather than dying, the main character, with his embracing parents watching, rides off into the night in a taxi cab.

 — Scott Huffman

The best (new) things on TV … and the Internet

STREAM QUEENS | Taraji P. Henson and Jussie Smollett from ‘Empire,’ top; James Wright creamed over a store-bought pie, opposite top; and gay ambush interviewer Billy Eichner, opposite below.

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

Dallas Voice has referred to its television coverage as ‘Tube” for decades — long before YouTube, XTube and the tubes over which we stream entertainment were conceived. So it makes sense that we broaden the definition of what Tube coverage is strictly from what you see on cable and Neflix to the whole panoply of entertainment that comes directly to your portable device. So, our Year in Review roundup this time includes a hodgepodge of things we watched in 2015 — broadcast, streaming, on Facebook and Twitter. The scope was amazing. (We limited the traditional Tube shows to new series, to narrow the universe a little.)

10. The Muppets (ABC). Maybe it’s the inner-child in all of us that makes The Muppets irresistible after more than 40 years. This reincarnation — moved from a Vaudeville house to the set of a late-night talk show — shows the Henson Creature Shop still knows comedy, and how to convince audiences that foam rubber frogs have real emotions. (Cheers, too,  for Fozzie’s gay joke: “When your online profile says you’re a ‘passionate bear looking for love…’ you get a lot of wrong responses.”)

9. The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (HBO). Few documentaries have uncovered the truth as dramatically as this miniseries from Andrew Jarecki, which profiled the strange, cross-dressing Texan who chopped up his neighbor but claimed self-defense. The finale, where Jarecki accidentally recorded Durst on tape confessing to murder, was the most compelling moment of television most people have ever witnessed.

8. Documentary Now (IFC). The Jinx wasn’t the only documentary that had us delighted, although the spoof series Documentary Now — from Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Seth Meyers — entertained for completely different reasons. In six episodes, the improv comedians skewered half a dozen “classic” documentaries with humorous twists (the best was the first: Grey Gardens, which morphs slowly into The Blair Witch Project). It was nerd humor for movie geeks.

7. Serial (Podcast). One final documentary makes the list, but this one a treat for the ears, not the eyes. The emergence in late 2014 of the Podcast Serial, chronicling the journey of Adnan Syed who seemed to have been railroaded into a murder conviction years ago, practically put Podcasts on the map. It returned just a few weeks ago with Season 2, which delves deeply into the facts and psychology of Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier captured by the Taliban — was he a traitor, a deserter, or a hero? We can’t wait to hear it all.

6. Matt Ballasai’s Whine About It (Buzzfeed). The Buzzfeed employe uncorks a bottle of wine and gets progressively drunker while railing about everything from “ways to ‘win’ at Thanksgiving dinner” to “the worst things about holiday office parties.”

5. Billy Eichner (YouTube). Eichner’s madman-on-the-street ambush interviews combine the out comedian’s manic friendliness with his sense of outrageous camp as he corners unsuspecting pedestrians and quizzes them about minutiae.

4. Gary Janetti’s Twitter feed (Twitter). The Vicious creator and Will & Grace producer tweets his bitter-queen observations constantly, with 140 characters full of venom and oh-no-he-didn’t humor.

3. Patti LaBelle’s Sweet Potato Pie (YouTube). Vlogger James Wright has recorded his ravings for a while, but he hit the stratosphere when he bought a Pattie LaBelle Sweet Potato Pie at Walmart and ate it live on camera, offering his review… which turned into an orgasm of culinary conversion, and put a pastry on the damn pop culture map.

2. Empire (Fox). Taraji P. Henson as Cookie became our favorite hero-villain, and Jussie Smollett an instant icon of the gay community, when Fox released this nighttime soap opera set in the world of hip hop music — an African-American Dallas with gay sex. I don’t use the term “guilty pleasure,” but if I did, the definition would have a picture of this show, co-created by out producer-director Lee Daniels.

1. The Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt (Netflix). Tina Fey may be this generation’s most distinctive comic voice, as she proved on NBC’s 30 Rock and confirmed with this Netflix series about a girl kidnapped and imprisoned by a cult leader for a decade, only to emerge Rip Van Winkle-like and determined to make a new life for herself. Titus Burgess provides exceptional comic support, but the writing and tone are the stars.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition December 25, 2015.

Aptly named gay cook Adrian De Berardinis’ hirsute pursuit of culinary creativity landed him on the sexy new webseries ‘The Bear Naked Chef’

NAKED LUNCH | Adrian De Berardinis made a name with his focaccia in New York City, but his buns get a lot of attention on his new webseries, ‘The Bear Naked Chef.’

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

Adrian De Berardinis puts the “bear” in “bare.”

On his new webseries, The Bear Naked Chef, the out-and-proud, hairy, muscular, tatted-up, New York-trained chef combines his passion for food with his nudist tendencies so that his audience not only learns the ins-and-outs of fine cuisine, but gets some eye-candy in the process. After barely a month online, and just two episodes released (so far), The Bear Naked Chef is stirring more than a stock pot with his largely (but not exclusively) gay fans. (He identified his age as “prime” … and he’s single.)

Once a Dallas resident — he’s an alumnus of Southern Methodist University, who now calls Los Angeles home — De Berardinis took time away from his slickly-produced series to talk to us about his culinary credentials, his hopes for the future of naked cooking and how it’s still possible (but a little risky!) to deep-fry in your birthday suit.

Dallas Voice: Where did your culinary interests originate?  De Berardinis: Growing up in a foodie household, I began cooking at age 8, cultivating my passion for authentic Italian cuisine. I had the privilege of working in our family-owned pizzerias and restaurants, which honed my kitchen and cooking skills. I worked in restaurants through college at SMU, and when I moved to NYC, worked in the kitchen at the East Village’s famous Frank restaurant, where I was honored with an award for Best Focaccia in New York City in 2000.

So, is Italian food your focus?  I specialize in authentic regional Italian dishes because of [my background], but my exploration doesn’t stop there. I experiment with other tastes from across the globe. I have so many favorite dishes to cook. This is what my web series is: my favorites — my greatest hits, if you will. There are many more delicious things to come. But I started the series with a dish that is near and dear to me, a family favorite: Chicken cacciatore. It’s something that was special to me and my family. But it’s deceptively simple to make, as all my recipes are.

I imagine there are risks to cooking naked — like, “never make bacon!”  I actually cook naked all the time at home, and have for years! It started with an ex of mine; He and I would get up in the morning and make breakfast naked. I continued this after we split. It feels sexy to me. Cooking is truly a sensual process for me. It’s a lot like making love.

Still, the hazards of cooking naked are quite obvious. This is why I use a little apron. I want to protect my junk. I’ve only had a few minor blips happen, with boiling water and hot oil but nothing emergency-room-worthy! (Tip: Open the oven door from one side of it, not in front.) I actually cook a dish with bacon in my third episode — stay tuned, y’all! But I use a pan with high sides. Whoops! There goes a secret.

Adrian De Berardinis

Other than your own history of being bare-assed in the kitchen, where did the idea come to make it into a show?  I had the idea back in June 2015 and I marinated in it for three months to figure out how I would want to execute it. In September, I ran into an old friend, Brandon Roberts [who would later become executive producer of the show] and pitched the concept to him. He was all over it, and within a week, he had assembled a production team and we shot the first three episodes a week later. It all happened quite quickly. We released the teaser on my YouTube channel on Dec. 15; a week later, we released Episode 1. It garnered a lot of attention. I was beside myself.

The show went viral on both releases, 300K views in the first week for Episode 1. The response was overwhelming and was received very well. I receive tons of messages and e-mails daily how much people love this. Not just because I’m naked though, but because they also love the food. That is the most gratifying part.

Mostly gay men, I suspect!  Interestingly enough, about 20 percent of my subscribers and viewers are female around the world.

Other than the nudity, the production values could easily make you believe it’s airing on the Cooking Channel.  I want watching to be a full sensory experience. The aesthetic, the set, the production is beautiful and I hope add to that with my personality, charm and expertise. Yes, people enjoy watching me cook naked, but truly, the show is about the food I cook. Hence my tag: Nothing Butt Good Food. I want people to try my recipes at home, enjoy the process and maybe try cooking naked themselves and discover something new about it.

What’s you hope for the future of it?  I have many ambitions on where to take the show. I want it to evolve and tell a story. I plan on having quests in the future, travelling to different countries and cooking with other cooks in their kitchens (all naked of course), and a cookbook is in the works. Stay tuned.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition January 29, 2016.

How Peeno, Kimmy & a little mermaid made Tituss Burgess an unlikely star

TITUSS, NOT TITUS | Tituss Burgess says not to confuse him with his character of Titus (only one S) whom he plays on the Netflix series ‘Kimmy Schmidt,’ which is now streaming all eps of Season 2.

The Internet loves a good penis pun.

One of 2015’s biggest breakout stars, Tituss Burgess, discovered this fact last year, when The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt actor’s already-escalating showbiz profile reached new heights thanks to a song he sang called “Peeno Noir: An Ode to Black Penis.” So Burgess can retire now, right?

“Oh no, I’m just getting started,” says the out actor, who originated Sebastian the Crab in the musical version of The Little Mermaid. “There are so many races to love on!”

Not to mention, there’s also the second — and hopefully third, fourth and eighth — season of Netflix’s Unbreakable, with all of Season 2 just online. The 37-year-old plays Titus (a variation on his real name, with just one “s”), an aspiring and very gay Broadway performer who lives with an unworldly doomsday-cult survivor named Kimmy (Ellie Kemper).

But back to that penis song…

— Chris Azzopardi

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Dallas Voice: What was it like seeing “Peeno Noir” take off like it did?  Burgess: I don’t know that I gave it as much thought or attention as attention was paid to it, and that’d be the honest truth. I mean, obviously I paid attention because I launched my own line of Pinot Noir [called “Pinot by Tituss”], but it was lovely to know that people thought it was funny and had taken ownership of it, but it’s become something other than what it initially was. People recite those words and tell me that their office breaks out into it just as release — no one’s thinking about what it actually meant — so it’s taken on a life of its own separate from the show. But it’s awesome and I love it, and I hope they find something as equally exciting and satisfying about this season as they did last season.

We get to learn more about Titus’s “straight life” this season. Who were you during your straight life?  Gay! [Laughs] Honestly, I had a formal conversation with my mom when I was 19, but I don’t know that I was ever in the closet, if I’m being perfectly honest. I never had the “I have to tell the world” mindset.

How much of the character is you?  I’m gonna be honest with you: very little. We share a similar wicked sense of humor and we both, of course, love musical theater and Diana Ross, but my energy lives a lot lower to the ground than his does and I don’t yearn for the spotlight the way he does. The fact is, I really, really enjoy my alone time, so I don’t crave that the way my character does. In fact, by the time we’re done filming the season, I’m quite exhausted. He requires such a high level of vibration, and so by the time it’s done, I’m happy to hang him up for a few months.

Titus’ breakthrough moment this season involves him in geisha garb. I’m just waiting to hear what the critics have to say about that.  Oooh lord. When I read that script I thought, “Jesus. Last year it was the wolf [Jacqueline, who is “American Indian,” unleashed a primal howl during the finale]; this year it’s gonna be the geisha.”

How prepared are you for any backlash?  Oh, I’m prepared. I’ve had six months to prep for the harsh criticism. The thing about [creators] Tina [Fey] and Robert [Carlock] is, they don’t shy away from the current climate of the country, and while on a surface level it might seem like they’re giving these silly stereotypes a platform, I think it’s just sort of exacerbating what we have become so sensitive to. But if it’s a headline, my friend, it is fair game.

Tina and Robert are two of the most informed people I’ve ever met, and sometimes we get scripts and I think, “Surely this has not happened somewhere,” or, “Surely this is something that they’ve made up.” So I’ll get on the Internet and there it is. The transracial storyline — people feeling as though as they remember past lives — when I read these headlines, it’s funny because it’s so unbelievable. So yeah, it’s a fine line, but they treat it with great sensitivity and great class — and it is, after all, a comedy.

Are there ever times where you’re like, “Tina, no, no — too far.”   Yeah — the geisha episode! I didn’t wanna do it.

What were you hesitant about?  I’m in white face, man! I didn’t want anyone to think I was disrespecting a culture. But what we did was make certain that, while it’s funny, he’s extremely sincere about what has happened to him. He’s for real, and as long as he’s for real in his interpretation and his acknowledgement of his past lives then it’s not offensive. There’s something oddly touching about the end of that episode, and I think it also serves a greater storyline, which is, Titus has finally taken the initiative to take control of his career. No one else is giving him a job, so he wrote one for himself, so that is what’s smart about it.

What do you think when people call Titus a stereotype?  I think they didn’t see the same show that I filmed. Titus is more everyman than Jacqueline, Kimmy or Lillian. He’s broke, he can’t afford to pay his rent, he’s chasing this career that has not materialized, he has trouble in relationships, at least last season, and he is not a size 32 in the waist. He gets rejected when he attempts to do something good with his life, even if it’s one of his bizarre “this is gonna make me famous” excursions. Most Americans are living lives unfulfilled. Most Americans don’t have the money that Jacqueline has. Most Americans, especially black people, don’t get away with committing murder like Lillian did. So they’re not paying attention, that’s what I think.

Your performance of Diana Ross’s “Believe in Yourself” while accepting the Human Rights Campaign’s Visibility Award late last year was so moving. Why is being out and visible important to you?  Honey, how much time do you have? [Laughs] I know what dark places feel like and I know what the absence of love and community feels like, and if I had a me when I was growing up to see, I would have perhaps been familiar to you guys a lot sooner than two years ago. For that reason, I don’t want any young person or any old person to not acknowledge who they came into the world being through all of their past lives. This current one that you’re experiencing is one that should be fully realized, otherwise you are the walking dead, and what is the point?

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition April 15, 2016.

Tonight on the Season 8 finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race, three diverse queens squared off against each other: Glamorous pageant girl Naomi Smalls, comedic wit Bob the Drag Queen and makeup illusionist Kim Chi. You could make an argument for any of them, but in the end, Ru was most impressed by comedy making Bob this year’s winner. Condragulations, my queen!

If there’s not cooking or Tim Gunn involved, I’m not much of one for reality TV, especially (though not exclusively) as practiced by TLC (which, I thought, used to stand for The Learning Channel but apparently now means Trashy Lifestyle Channel). The programming  look very much like a race to be The Least Common Denominator (another TLC…D!) of cheap entertainment: Honey Boo-Boo. Duck Dynasty. Little Couples. I Am Cait. They seem like non-geographic versions of The Real Housewives — niche shows that hope, desperately, to grab eyeballs in a kind of freakshow of the airwaves: “Look, at these actual families of misfits behaving stupidly for your amusement!” They all seem to be touted with carnival-barker vulgarity.

And so I didn’t watch the first season of I Am Jazz. It appeared to be like all the others. But I took a look at the second season premiere, which starts Wednesday at 9 p.m. on TLC. One reason is that Jazz Jennings, the focus of the show, seems so prepossessed: Now 15, she’s written a book about being a transgender teen (one taught in schools, which is a plotline on the opening episode), been heralded for her openness by Time and Out magazines and was a pioneer in getting the right to use the girls’ bathroom. She’s a millennial role model, and conveys something all too rare in reality TV: Personal dignity.

Jazz and her supportive family have had some time getting used to it. She came out as trans at age 6, and everyone seems comfortable with the feminine pronoun… except some haters, who truly don’t understand (or want to understand) trans issues. She’s not brave in the overused sense that pop culture has diminished — she’s rather just a normal teen living through unusual circumstances with as much grace as any teen could be expected to show. You like Jazz — and her mom and dad and siblings, who are all equally “normal” — and so the pitfalls she endures resonate more. They don’t seem faked, because we all know how difficult being an “other” teen is, at any time. (It seems especially relevant during the current political climate. I wonder if the North Carolina legislature will allow it to air there?)

So I may make an exception to my reality TV rules. I might watch I Am Jazz, as much to support the next generation of leaders as to see what happens next in her life. And keep hope alive that quality may actually make a difference.

It’s gay Pride month — our commemorative issue comes out next Friday, so look for it on newsstands and online — and the Logo network is showing documentaries focused on gay issues. Up this Monday: Out of Iraq: A Love Story. The film documents the efforts of an Iraqi-born translator for the American military who meets and falls in love with an Iraqi soldier, and when circumstances force them apart, his efforts to rescue his love from the homophobic regime. The politically-charged documentary airs June 13 at 8 p.m. Here’s a sneak peek.

How ‘Girls’ created Lena Dunham was inspired by her genderqueer sister to produce the trans documentary ‘Suited’

Suited is the perfect fit for Lena Dunham.
As producer of the thought-provoking documentary about the powerful relationship between fashion and identity, Dunham knows firsthand that bending the gender rules by wearing a suit can be a transformative experience. During this year’s annual Met Gala, the multi-hyphenate — actor, author, director, social activist, feminist, out-and-proud proponent of the word “no” — rocked an androgynous look, sporting black-tie attire and slicked-back hair as if she were a GQ cover model. The masc moment was classic Dunham — meaning, yet another strong statement. Known for her Emmy Award-winning HBO series Girls, the 30-year-old has made it her life’s mission to tear down societal standards.

Backing Suited only seemed natural, then. In Jason Benjamin’s directorial debut, airing on HBO this week (see sidebar on Page 53 for a review), transgender and genderfluid suit-buyers uncover a deeper sense of self as they find garments that speak to their identity at Bindle & Keep, a Brooklyn-based bespoke men and womenswear company.

Dunham’s genderqueer sister, Grace, appears in the documentary while on a quest for a “dark wool suit … to run around in.”

Dunham recently phoned for a candid conversation about how Grace’s gender subversions have influenced her to challenge Hollywood norms. During the interview, the actor also elaborated on the “strength” she gained from wearing her own tailored suit, seeking to break stereotypes with her zeitgeist coming-of-age dramedy Girls, and being so gay adjacent she calls her significant other, fun.’s lead guitarist Jack Antonoff, her “partner.”

— Chris Azzopardi

Dallas Voice: I’m gonna try not to cry again just thinking about one of the doc’s subjects, 12-year-old Aidan Star Jones. I’m not transgender, but I felt like I was watching a version of myself.  Lena Dunham: That makes me so happy! And by the way, I’ve seen the movie a million times and I still weep every time I watch it. I weep every time my sister comes onscreen. I just weep because I love that it’s kind of a feel-good movie. People are expecting this gritty documentary and I’m like, yes, there are moments of that, but really it’s the family movie I would want to watch if I thought that queerness was more accepted in the world of family movies, which I hope it will be soon.

In what ways did you find yourself empathizing with some of the people who visited Bindle & Keep?  I don’t identify as queer in my sexuality, but I have a lot of really close relationships with queer people, and queer culture has been hugely influential. Like so many disenfranchised women, queer culture has been a huge part of my coming of age.

Like I said, I’m a straight girl, but what I really empathized with was the need to find yourself in fashion when there aren’t representations of you. I know that when I entered high school and became a chubby girl — I’d always been a little skinny kid and then suddenly I gained 40 pounds in four months and didn’t know what to do with my body and didn’t feel like there was a place [for me]. I could either walk into a Lane Bryant and sheath myself in something that didn’t make me feel like myself at all or I could continue to wear my too-tight hot pink sweatpants. I didn’t feel like there was a place for my body to be seen or known or understood.

A scene from the Lena Dunham-produced documentary ‘Suited,’ which debuts Monday on HBO.

So, for me, what’s been really powerful as an adult has been having my clothes tailored, which is something I only started doing once I started going to red-carpet events, and even though I’ve had that experience, I actually had a Bindle & Keep suit made for our Sundance premiere. The experience of putting on something that just fucking fit was so remarkable, and I looked in the mirror and there was this strength that came from not trying to hide any part of myself. So, I think we can all relate to that feeling of trying to find the look — of fashion being a way to try and express yourself, and not feeling like there’s any place to turn in the commercial marketplace where your identity’s being accepted. In that way, fashion turns from something that is very superficial to something that is extremely emotional.

I finally fit into a shirt that I’d been wanting to fit into for a long time, so I get it.  It’s amazing. It’s so subtle but it’s so important. My dad has always been into tailoring. He’s a real suit guy. My friends will be like, “I saw your dad and I knew it was him from far away because he was wearing this super sharp suit at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday heading to the grocery store,” and this made me really understand that part of the reason my dad does that is because it makes him feel that he can own his identity. Something that I love in our family is, my dad has all these suits and then my sibling, Grace, who’s in the movie, will take his old suits and tailor them to her body.

It’s funny, when we were little girls, my dad always wanted to dress us in a super androgynous way. If we were alone with him for the day, it was a plaid shirt, jeans, sneakers; he just thinks androgynous fashion on women is super cool. One of the first presents that he bought each of us: He got me a suit in eighth grade; he got my sister a suit in high school. He would really push the-ladies-in-suits angle. My mom came up in New York in the ’80s wearing a power suit, so the idea of suiting as something that kind of already defies gender lines, I already felt like I had an understanding of. This [movie] obviously takes it to a whole new level.

How do you hope the stories that you are a part of telling, such as Suited and your work as creator of Girls, can enrich and embolden the lives of the LGBTQ community?  I think my biggest hope — and my [creative] partner Jenni Konner’s definitely coming from the same place — is just that these stories make people feel seen. That was always our goal with Girls. I went into HBO and said, “Hey, I don’t see any shows that represent my friends.” And then when we put it on, and we got our own critiques about what we were representing, we were going, “Wait, a bunch of other people feel that way too,” because I didn’t see kind of my weirdo, anxious chubby self on television. Other women didn’t see complex women of color represented on television; other women went, “Hey, I’m Asian and I’ve never seen a character who doesn’t just have her nose in a book and is playing the violin.”

We’re always just trying to push back against stereotypical representation or play with it in an intelligent way.

And what I loved about Suited: This is about an aspect of queer life — we spend so much time thinking about, and rightfully so, these huge issues like marriage equality, raising families, job discrimination; this is a much more seemingly mundane issue. For the queer community and members of the gender nonconforming community, it actually ripples to every part of their life.

Because you see, if [doc subject] Everett [Arthur] doesn’t get a suit then Everett doesn’t feel confident and Everett’s not gonna get a job and Everett’s not gonna show that, hey, a gender nonconforming trans lawyer is an option in the South. It goes so far. I just hope people see it and go, “I’m seeing myself represented whether I’m queer or not in these characters, and this is a version of the queer story that I haven’t seen before.”

How has having a sister who identifies as a gender nonconforming person changed your perspective on yourself and your sexuality?  This is an overused word, but Grace is a really brave person. Grace very much came into the world — age 3 — being like, “I don’t wanna wear a dress and I’m being myself.” Grace always makes a joke that she was briefly straight from the ages of 7 to 10. She very much came into the world with this radicalized approach to being a woman. She did an interview recently in the New York Times in which she was having a conversation with her friend Nicole Eisenman, who is also a queer woman, and they asked Grace about her pronouns and Grace was like, I’m a gender nonconforming person but I’m OK with being called “she” because I like to really push the boundaries of what “she” can be, and that really resonated with me. Because even though I consider myself female and I have a more binary approach to my sexuality, I think that Grace’s idea about expanding the definition of what “she” can mean has really opened me up.

Before Grace became so deeply embedded in her identity, I think that I was still thinking of the world as… I accepted the idea of transness but I felt like I didn’t understand the idea of a person whose gender and sexuality could contain elements of everything that they’d seen. It’s funny: You know, I wore a tuxedo to the Met Ball this year and it was such a great feeling to go to a big fashion event where you’re surrounded by girls in gowns and feel this kind of strength that comes from being feminine while owning some masculine attributes.

How did it feel to be the odd man out, so to speak?  It’s this very ineffable thing where you’re like, “I feel cool, I feel sexy, I feel like myself.” I felt a little bit at the Met Ball — I’d go up to ladies and be like [deepens voice to resemble a man], “You look great!” [Laughs] I was owning these kind of masculine clothes I had on and it felt really good, and I feel without Grace in my life I wouldn’t. I think, especially when you’re working in Hollywood, there’s a real pressure to conform to femininity in a traditional way, especially if you don’t look like what people think a TV star should look like. When I was first getting styled I’d go, “I just wanna wear a really pretty dress and really pretty makeup, so when I go to an event people think, ‘Oh, she’s way prettier in person than I thought she would be.’” That’s all I wanted. And now, Grace has made me feel like I can go in with a fucking suit with my hair messed up because the rules have changed.

I love that you’ve taken her lead. Speaking of people who’ve influenced your world, I talked to Jack a few years ago.  My partner.

Is that what you call him? I use partner because I like it. We’re not married, but also, he’s not my boyfriend. I feel like it’s another one where I’m like, I’m kind of down with the queer community. I have my partner! He’s my partner!

Your refusal to marry until your sister could was admirable, and you wrote a wonderful essay after the Supreme Court ruling last June. It’s been a year since the ruling. Have you thought about what you might have the queer people in your wedding party wear?  That’s an amazing question, and actually, Jack and I have talked about it and we’ve always said that when we get married we want our wedding party to just be our two sisters in tuxedos. Jack has a straight sister, I have a queer sister; they’d be our best men / women and we’ll call it a day. That’s our dream.

……………………………….

HBO doc ‘Suited’ shows how clothes really can make the man

As most people know, trans men are born biological women, and alter their gender identity in a variety of ways: Through hormones, name-change, grooming and surgery. But as much as can be accomplished by science and ingenuity, “there are curves on this body that don’t make sense,” as one trans man observes. Another pre-surgical genderqueer man “binds” to look more flat-chested … but can’t hide everything. Buying off-the-rack suits for a body with structurally wider hips or narrower shoulders is a compromise option that rarely offers a precise fit.

Suited, a new documentary (produced by Lena Dunham) that premieres on HBO Monday night, purports to be about Rachel, a trans man, and Daniel, a straight man, who team up to make custom clothing for members of the trans community. But really, the film is about their customers: The personal stories of men and boys who feel complete only when wearing clothing that they are comfortable in. (The cast includes one male-to-female trans attorney who wants a conservative business suit before an oral argument before an appellate court.) It gives real weight to the aphorism, “Clothes make the man.” Rachel and Daniel are not so much tailors as confidantes, therapists, counselors and bartenders. (It feels less like Project Runway than another HBO show — Taxicab Confessions with needle and thread.)

Many of the stories are compelling, to be sure, but the weak spot is the payoff. You really want to see these men’s bodies transformed by masterful tailoring. But some of the suits actually seem a bit dowdy or ill-fitting. There’s no Cinderella moment that the audience sees. Then again, that’s not totally the point: Their customers’ self-images are enhanced, if not by bespoke couture, then by a patient ear and a concern for making them feel comfortable about who they are. “You have a right to be handsome,” Daniel says at the end. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

Airs on HBO June 20 at 8 p.m.     

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition June 17, 2016.

The Emmy Award nominations were revealed this morning, and once again there are several nomination of particular interest to the gay community.

Once again Transparent — the Amazon Studios series about a male-to-female trans woman who transitions late in life (and starring last year’s Emmy winner Jeffrey Tambor) — is nominated for outstanding comedy series, along with Tambor (lead actor), Judith Light and Gaby Hoffman (supporting actress), Bradley Whitford (guest actor) and Melora Hardin (guest actress). Creator Jill Solloway, who won for writing last year, is nominated again this year as best director of a comedy series. Transparent will compete against some other gay faves: The Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, HBO’s Veep and ABC’s Modern Family.

Leading actress in a comedy series is a powerhouse category this year. Last year’s winner Julia Louis-Dreyfuss (Veep) is up against  out actress Lily Tomlin (Grace and Frankie), Amy Schumer (Inside Amy Schumer), Laurie Metcalf (Getting On), Tracee Ellis Ross (Blackish) and Ellie Kemper (Kimmy Schmidt). Tituss Burgess from Kimmy Schmidt is nominated as supporting actor in a comedy as Kimmy’s flamboyant roommate.

Burgess will be up against Louie Anderson, who gives an amazing cross-dressing performance as Zach Galifianakis’ mom in FX’s Baskets. Andre Braugher, who plays a stiff but gay police captain on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, is also nominated, as are Keegan-Michael Key in the now-canceled variety series Key & Peele; previous winners Ty Burrell from Modern Family and Tony Hale from Veep; and Matt Walsh from Veep. In addition to the Transparent women, supporting actress in a comedy includes out actress Kate McKinnon for her many roles (especially Hillary Clinton) on Saturday Night Live.

Downtown Abbey and Game of Thrones are the big contenders in drama series (both are former winners). Tatiana Maslany, who plays a number of clones (including one transgender) on Orphan Black, is up for leading actress against Taraji P. Henson in the very gay Empire and Viola Davis in the equally gay How to Get Away with Murder.

Limited series is full of interesting contenders as well, with the Ryan Murphy-produced The People vs. O.J. Simpson going against the second iteration of American Crime, which this season was about a gay teen. Courtney B. Vance and Cuba Gooding Jr. are both up for leading actor for People Vs., playing Johnnie Cochrane and Simpson. Out actress Sarah Paulson is nominated as leading actress in the same for playing prosecutor Marcia Clark. Sterling K. Brown, David Schwimmer and John Travolta are up for supporting actor. Paulson is also up for supporting actress for the latest American Horror Story: Hotel.

RuPaul’s Drag Race finally made it into the final list, with RuPaul up for best reality show host. She’s up against Jane Lynch for Hollywood Game Night, and others. Gaycation with Ellen Page is up for best non-fiction series.

You can see the full list here. The winners will be announced in September.

Comedian Mario Cantone brings his inimitable outlook to ‘Page Six TV’

SUPER MARIO | Cantone is one of four panelists discussing the trends of the day on the summer series.

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

Summer is usually a black hole for original TV programming, but if you’ve tuned into the broadcast networks this past week, chances are you’ve seen a show with Mario Cantone. First, he was a celebrity guest on the primetime reboot of the classic game show The $100,000 Pyramid (and he’ll be on its sister show, Match Game, next month). And late-night on Fox, you might have caught him as one of the hosts of Page Six TV, the new gossip chatfest getting a three-week tryout in select cities, including Dallas. What’s with the media blitz, Mario?

“If they ask me, I [show up] — I can’t go beggin’, Arnold!” he shouts in mock anger. “I go home and watch Turner Classics Movies and when they call, I come. The problem is, you’re always asked to do the stuff you don’t want, and aren’t for the ones you do.”

That’s not the case, he insists, for Page Six TV, modeled after the New York Post’s famed gossip column.

“The thing about Page Six is, it’s historic — not that it invented gossip, but it’s always been fun and lighthearted. That’s what I like about it — it’s more ‘what the fuck’ than ‘fuck you.’”

On the TV version, Cantone and his fellow panelists — entertainment reporters Elizabeth Wagmeister and Carlos Greer, lifestyle guru Bevy Smith and host John Fugelsang — tackle a series of trending topics in the news that day, and offer their insights. Example: In rehearsal, they discussed the current trend of people who are getting vegetable tattoos. “Reallly!?” Cantone gasps. “What the fuck! You gotta watch the tattoos — when your 90 and you skin is hanging on the floor, and the ink is staining the carpet, don’t call me!” And don’t get him started on Pokemon GO.

So what, exactly is Cantone, who has no background in journalism, doing among these experienced rumor-mavens?

“[The producers] called me and said they wanted a comedian,” he explains. “I won’t do a reality show, but I will do a talk show or a game show. And it’s the mix of the cast that moves it along. I really love Bevy Smith — she’s so knowledgeable about [pop culture]. And Carlos! I love his demeanor. He and Elizabeth are more serious, because they’re journalists. My comments are frivolous, spontaneous and hopefully funny, which I think is refreshing. If everyone was so in-the-know, it wouldn’t [have broad appeal]. I’m representing you on the show, Arnold!”

Me? You mean, the gays? Not necessarily…

“No offense to my people, because I love them, but if I brought a true gay perspective, I would watch The Real Housewives, which I don’t. And they’re all Italian, which is so embarrassing for me! A friend forced to me to watch the Kardashians the other day, which was torture!!! No, I represent the townhouse set — I bring the cranky-old-man perspective.”

Cantone is joking (a little), but it’s true that his persona — from his guest spots on The View (or Pyramid) to his featured role in Sex and the City to his Tony-nominated show Laugh Whore — is that of the short-tempered New Yorker with a heart of gold but no time for bullshit. Unlike a Lewis Black or Sam Kinison, his shouting doesn’t seem like a pot boiling over but a teakettle letting off steam before providing a refreshing beverage. He has an old-school appreciation for who deserves to be famous.

“I was teaching the young’uns, like young Carlos Greer, that in my day, you had to have a craft to be a star. Now, people are famous without having a craft. And whether you think I’m funny or not, I know how to hold an audience. On the show, I’m coming from that animosity and resentment,” he says. (It’s probably what led Jon Stewart to call him “the white Sammy Davis Jr.”)

He hopes, of course, that the show is a hit with audiences.

“It’s the summer and this came out of nowhere,” he says. “If it goes away, in 2017 I’ll be in my trailer. Come get me.” He’ll just be watching Turner Classic Movies.

Page Six TV airs weeknights at 11:30 p.m. on Fox4

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition July 22, 2016.

How the Texas Bear Round-Up impacted one of the stars of ‘Looking,’ and other thoughts on the legacy of a groundbreaking series about modern gay life

It was “goodbye for now” as the cast and crew of HBO’s modern-queer dramedy Looking stood in the rising San Francisco sun tearfully hugging as they concluded production on the story-ending made-for-TV movie. Just like in the film’s final scene, Daniel Franzese, who plays Eddie, reminisces, “We broke night.”

Of course they did. Looking was, ultimately, extraordinarily ordinary, a time-capsule of contemporary queerness revolving around a chummy, could-be-your-own friend group navigating love and life in the Mission/Castro district.

That final diner scene — which bowed on July 24 and will be re-aired on HBO — wasn’t just our last time with Patrick and Dom and Agustin and the others who became part of our lives during these last few years; for the actors, it was, provisionally, their last time, too. “It was like the last two of weeks of high school, like the weekend after everyone graduates from college,” Franzese muses.

Premiering in 2014 to critical praise but a modest following (the series reached a peak of 519,000 viewers its first season), Looking was divisive from the get-go, with viewers either drawn to its languid style of storytelling or vehemently against it. Was it too gay? Not gay enough? When Doris, the group’s straight girlfriend, comments on a squabble between main-gay Patrick and his ex’s new boyfriend during the film, she spoke for many: “Ohh, I love it when gays argue with other gays about being gay,” she cracks.

Still, there’s no arguing that Looking broke ground merely by existing. Beyond that, however, creator Michael Lannan and director Andrew Haigh (who helmed the gay love story Weekend in 2011), spent the last several years tapping into the queer Zeitgeist, past and present. The result was special, relevant and sincere.

Jonathan Groff, who portrayed neurotic boy-next-door video game designer Patrick, shared that sentiment even before Season 1 premiered, saying, “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. I feel really lucky to be a part of this specific show because I believe in it so much as a television show.”

So did Lannan. The screenwriter never believed his idea for Looking could be more than the images swirling around in his mind, and even when they did land on the screen, and Season 1 aired, and then the show got HBO’s go for a second season, “I don’t think I ever thought it was really happening.”

Before Looking, Lannan was living in New York, where his own group of friends and their stories became the catalyst for the series, which he initially wrote as an indie film script before HBO expressed interest. They envisioned his idea as a series.

“I always thought it should be a show,” says Lannan, whose 2011 short film Lorimer was the seed for Looking. “I think one of the reasons HBO wanted to do it, and we all wanted to do it, was because the world has changed so quickly in the past 10 years. This isn’t the Queer as Folk world — it’s a different world, and we wanted to do a show about people just living their lives in a time of great change.”

Now, he says, in the wake of its final-for-now chapter, it feels “bittersweet.” Looking: The Movie is a heartfelt send-off with Patrick, currently living in Denver, returning to San Francisco for a wedding and meeting up with BFFs Agustin (Frankie J. Alvarez) and Dom (Murray Bartlett), Doris (Lauren Weedman), Eddie and former flames Kevin (Russell Tovey) and Richie (Raúl Castillo).

“We wanted to find some midpoint between resolving their stories and sending them off on their way for new adventures and leaving that door open,” Lannan explains. “It’s tricky to do both of those things.”

Lannan confirms that they’d already been plotting a third season when HBO announced the show’s cancellation, optioning, instead, to tie up loose ends with a feature film (and to finally offer closure to Patrick’s ongoing romantic drama). And so, though “we were heartbroken,” Lannan and the writers condensed the storylines into an 86-minute movie.

“We just went back to the heart of the show, which is Patrick, and we let him drive the story,” Lannan says. “I think everyone’s lives are really reflecting on Patrick, and his on theirs. At its heart the show was really as much about friendship and the family of friends as it was about anything else.”

Eddie, one of the show’s popular periphery characters, plays a pivotal role in Patrick’s life in the film. It almost wasn’t supposed to happen that way. Initially, Franzese was only booked for a few episodes. That changed once showrunners witnessed his natural chemistry with Alvarez during his debut on the Season 2 premiere, “Looking for the Promised Land.”

Daniel Franzese, above left, had an epiphany about the important of his ‘Looking’ character — an HIV-positive man of size — when he met a sero-discordant couple at TBRU. (Photos courtesy HBO)

Even though Franzese’s HIV-positive bear character may not have had as much screen-time as his co-stars, the actor and his watershed onscreen part left an indelible mark on the show and the people who watched it. And for many reasons. According to GLAAD, Eddie was the first poz character in six years on scripted TV (since an arc on ER). His character represented what it means to be HIV-positive today, introducing PrEP to the TV landscape as he pursued a relationship with Agustin, who’s HIV-negative.

“Andrew told me, ‘Eddie will never get sick, that’s not what this is about,’” Franzese recalls. “Knowing that, I just kind of put it to the side and didn’t really think about the impact it might have. I was more happy and excited to be a larger guy, a man of stature, on a television show and shown in a sexual light and not as castrated comic relief.”

Because it was “just shown,” the feedback from viewers has been rich, which demonstrated to him that, “Representation matters, and education matters.”

Still, bears continue to reach out to him on Instagram expressing an admiration for a character on TV they can finally identify with. But “most moving,” he professes, was meeting a “magnetic” couple — one HIV-positive, the other negative — when Franzese made an appearance during the Dallas Bears’ annual Texas Bear Round-Up in 2015.

“[The HIV-positive partner] said to me, ‘You know, I hope that I’m with my partner forever, but if I’m ever not and somebody wants to date me I’m going to show them Season 2 of Looking and say, ‘If you can get through this, then you can date me.’”

Franzese leaves Looking with a fondness for his influential character, the show and also the cast. Inside jokes, that already-established vibe, the camaraderie — sometimes, he says, speaking from experience, joining a show after it’s already launched feels like a “fleeting relationship.” But Looking was different. “When I’m a regular on a show and I have a guest star coming in, I will treat them with the same grace and respect and friendship that I learned on this set.”

Franzese was only recently out when the show premiered. Now newly engaged, the 38-year-old acknowledges that Looking was “profound for me in a lot of ways.”

“I had just come out and this was my first job after that,” he recalls. “To not only be accepted for being gay but to be celebrated and to have it not be a big deal — like, it was cooler to be gay on that set — it was so freeing and reaffirming.”

Not just for Franzese. Looking’s greatest legacy could be, perhaps, how it rendered the gay experience as simply the human experience. It wasn’t about coming out. It wasn’t about gay people dying of AIDS. The narrative felt fresh because finally gay people could just… be.
Before Season 2, Tovey said, “It’s such a true voice for gay people. This is, right now, where it’s like to be a gay man who can get married and adopt.”

As the show’s creator, Lannan has been forced to contemplate the show’s legacy, and if anything, he says, he wants it to represent a moment in time… and also the passage of time.

“We wanted to see what happened when Patrick grew up,” he says about the finale, “and I think it’s exciting to see Patrick in command of his sexuality in a different way. He certainly hasn’t solved all of his problems, sexual or otherwise, but he has grown throughout the seasons and throughout the movie and I love seeing that.

“Patrick was always a character who had one foot in the past as a gay man. He grew up with the shadow of AIDS in the background, yet he wasn’t a part of that generation, so he had one foot in the past and one in the future. I hope that’s part of the legacy of the show, that it spanned a transitional period for gay men like Patrick.”

As advances in the queer community continue to evolve, could Looking become an ongoing TV narrative where we check in with these characters every now and again? What will Patrick be like in 2026? What will we all be like then?

The thought has crossed Lannan’s mind.

“We’ve definitely talked about it,” he reveals, “and I think if the stars aligned we’d all love to do it again in the future. I think it depends on a lot of things, but I would say, none of us would count it out.” He says that “one of our spirit-animal shows while we were making Looking was The Comeback ” — the Lisa Kudrow cult sitcom was renewed for a second season after a nearly decade-long hiatus — “so maybe we’ll do sort of a Comeback thing and check in again in the future.”

Franzese still has plans for Eddie and for the lives of the young transgender characters who were a part of the character’s story arc while working at a homeless shelter for LGBT teens.

“That would’ve been such a beautiful thing,” he says. “That would’ve unfolded in Season 3. I would really look forward to that in the future.”

So the end may not be the end after all. Maybe the sun hasn’t fully set on Looking just yet.

“Who knows — later on down the line I’d love to revisit these characters again,” Franzese says. “Knowing the people I worked with, I can’t even think of a production assistant who would say they wouldn’t want to be back on that set again. But I think this movie is a beautiful next step in the story, and if we all love each other and we love these characters, and I think if Andrew and Michael are inspired with some story, why not?”

— Chris Azzopardi

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition July 29, 2016.

Alyssa Edwards tackles ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ again, this time as an  All Star.  And she’s more prepared than eve

By J. DENTON BRICKER AND ARNOLD WAYNE JONES

When Alyssa Edwards walked onto the set of RuPaul’s Drag Race for Season 5, she was shocked to see her longtime rival Coco Montrese among the queens she’d be competing with. The drama made for delicious television, but probably threw Edwards off her game — she finished in the Top 6, but failed to be declared America’s Next Drag Superstar.

So when she was asked to join the cast for the second incarnation of Drag Race All Stars — which begins airing on Aug. 25 on Logo — she decided to play a smarter mental game. She didn’t ask past All Stars for advice. She didn’t worry about who would or would not be her competition. She went all Zen on those bitches’ asses.

“I told myself don’t overly coach — go in there and be you,” Edwards says. “Don’t get inside your head. You need to do this like you do every single day of your life — whether you’re in the studio teaching, or onstage performing, you’re tackling the challenges you’re faced with. You should avoid letting it becoming a mental battle.”

That was certainly good preparation, because once filming began, it was a free-for-all. First up was the discovery that the rules had changed.

“[This season is] borderline Big Brother, because Ru doesn’t make the decisions this time,” she says. “We found that out on Day One. We had no clue! And you’ll see how cracked out we are. All of your dreams have been crushed because guess what? [We were told,] ‘You are going to be sending yourselves home.’ And I’m just like oh-my-gosh.”

This surprise definitely changed dynamics among the contestants, because even though the competition has always been cutthroat, this development took it to another level of intensity.

“I was looking around the room like, ‘Well OK, I’m glad I’m kind of friends with everyone almost.’ Luckily, I do have a good rapport with the girls. That doesn’t mean that they don’t want to send you home, honey, because you’re a threat or you’re the possibility that could get in the way of cashing that check.”

One of the girls in the room, it so happened, was Coco Montrese … again. And three other queens from Season 5, making it a reunion of sorts (though not necessarily the good kind).

“I was a little shocked [that] five of the 10 girls came from [my] season. I thought there would have been two, maybe three of us. But we all knew each other — you know somebody and you know when they’re having a bad day or moment, and therefore not overanalyze things that they say,” says Edwards.

That pressure was modulated by other rule changes … including the ultimate reward.

“The stakes are a little different this time around. I’m talking about the coin, the dollar,” Edwards says. “I think everyone that watches the first episode is going to be in for a treat because they totally ru-vamped the idea [of the show]. ‘Coming for you’ is a nice way of putting it.”

But Edwards was prepared this time. Before, she was a pageant queen with a long list of titles. Now, she has not only one season of RPDR under her belt, but the web-based series Alyssa’s Secret and a work ethic rivaled by no one. She went in a stronger queen than ever before, but also a wiser one: She has a solid grasp of her strengths and weaknesses — as well as those of her competitors …. and where they would best be served.

“We are all good in one thing [or another],” she says. “I would never want to step foot on a runway or a photoshoot [to challenge] Violet Chachki, but we can lip sync [against each other] all day. I don’t ever want to get into a Snatch Game battle with Chad Michaels. And why on God’s green earth would I ever ponder a comedy challenge against Bianca Del Rio?”

But Edwards — aka Mesquite native Justin Johnson — also knows something about showmanship. She worked with former Dallasite Rey Ortiz — a fashion designer and himself a former Project Runway contestant — to come up with her smashing debut look, a dazzling ruby gown with a majestic collar.

“I told Rey, I’m OK with doing something fashionista. I don’t consider myself a fashion girl and I don’t think I have the body to model. But I wanted something avant garde, something sexy with my platform heels. I wanted something that just speaks royalty — like she’s the queen. It has a touch of regalness to it but a touch of okurrrr. He was like, that’s a lot of inspiration.”

That costume may have contributed to her secret weapon: Attitude.

“This time I presented myself to be open, confident … and not to tell myself ‘no.’ Just like I teach my kids every day: ‘Can’t never could.’ You better get up there to sing and sew,” she says. “Alaska said it very well: When you’re in Drag Race it’s kind of like a constant fight-or-flight mentality.”

Her newfound calm even informs how she wants fans to watch All Stars this time out.

“I hope the fans watch it this time from a different angle. Drag Race is such a sport — we all get caught up in it, so involved. Just watch it this time: laugh, giggle, have fun with it. Ride it like a rollercoaster; let the ups and downs be equally exciting. Support all the girls, all the queens. It is so difficult when there is a platform and you’re under a microscope. Remove that microscope and live for what it is. Cheers to that.”

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition August 12, 2016.

Christopher Guest has long been acknowledged as the master of the improv-inspired mockumentary — first as a cast member/writer of This Is Spinal Tap (which practically invented the genre), then as director in several short for Saturday Night Live and later in the classic features Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration, in which he delved into, respectively, small-town aspirations for fame, dog shows, folk music and Oscar campaigning. At the heart of all of them is the how foolishly grand people can be about the silliest dreams. They are hilarious but occasionally heartbreaking explorations of the fragility of ego.

Guest has returned again, this time with the Netflix exclusive film Mascots which, as its title suggests, is about the world of competitive mascotting: People who dress up in oversized heads and as creatures and even inanimate objects in order to excite and delight crowds in a pantomine of exaggerated enthusiasm.

I doubt mascotting contests like these exist, or exist in this way, but I don’t put it past Guest to have culled his ideas from real life. Certainly we have seen similar kinds of competitions (baby beauty shows like Toddlers and Tiaras or Little Miss Sunshine, and even at ComicCon events). But Guest is too savvy to go for the overly familiar; he can have so much more fun poking the bear when that bear is actually a furry.

Once again, Guest has assembled his stock of master actors, among them Jane Lynch, Bob Balaban, Fred Willard, Jennifer Coolidge and Parker Posey. But best of all? Guest himself returns as Corky St. Clair, the closeted high school theater director craving his big shot in Guffman. It’s too bad that, in the comparative intimacy of your living room, you don’t get the chance to experience his return with the kind of amazement a theater audience would convey, but who cares!? Anyone who would complain about that are … bastard people!

The climax, of course, is the face-offs between the varying mascots, which calls to mind Justin Timberlake’s brilliant variation as a hip-hop dancing mascot on some SNL skits. You root for some, you pity others, but like the best of experiences, it’s the journey, not the destination, that really resonates.

Mascots, now streaming on Netflix.

The best (new) things on television — and the Internet — in 2016

DANCE 10, PINS 3 | The gay kid (Noah Galvin) becomes the school jock hero by winning a wrestling match by way of Jerome Robbins choreography in ABC’s ‘The Real O’Neals.’

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Executive Editor jones@dallasvoice.com

With so many platforms, doing an exhaustive rundown of what we call Tube — everything from traditional broadcast and basic cable TV, to premium cable, streaming services and Podcasts — would be nearly impossible. So we limit it to new shows (or at least basically new to us). So don’t get flustered if you don’t see Game of Thrones or Last Week Tonight or RuPaul’s Drag Race here — we love them too, and have said so in the past. This is in celebration of the newcomers.

10. The Radio Adventures of Eleanor Amplified (Podcast). The old-school adventure serial — about a “girl reporter” (hey! “Woman!”) combatting evil at the upper echelons of business eerily prefigured Drumpf’s victory, except Eleanor defeated the meanies in this Podcast created for children (boys and girls), but with enough snark and sass for their parents as well, or anyone who enjoys having their auditory imagination teased.

9. The Night Of (HBO). A dutiful but flawed Muslim kid enjoys a drug-filled one-night-stand, awakes to the girl brutally murdered, and becomes part of the criminal justice system, for good or bad, in this limited-series procedural — a sort of modern-day anatomy of due process. Riz Ahmed is sympathetic as the kid and Michael Kenneth Williams electric as his prison protector, but it’s John Turturro’s as a lopey, annoying, eczema-plagued public defender who steals the show.

8. Take My Wife (Seeso). Real-life comics and partners Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher play fictionalized (I assume) versions of themselves, navigating love and relationships. Wisely observed and wryly executed, it’s one of the least abashed portraits of the urban lesbian experience seen on TV… well, streamed.

MAKING A MURDERER | The robotics process goes horribly wrong in HBO’s ‘Westworld.’

7. Making a Murderer (Netflix). Released very late in 2015, this documentary series is about a man who spent many years in prison for rape only to be finally and conclusively exonerated … and arrested a year later for another even more horrific crime. Twenty years in the making, this real-life mystery is life Errol Morris’ Thin Blue Line blown up to series proportion, with a Kafka-esque, rednecky twist and a dash of the McMartin Trial thrown in. Provocative and unnerving.

6. Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (TBS). Oh, Jon Stewart, how could you abandon us before an election year? At least your protégé, Samantha Bee, picked up the mantle (far better than your Daily Show replacement Trevor Noah) to join John Oliver and Bill Maher (only on basic cable!) in fighting the good fight of political satire. Who knew women could be funny? …. Oh, right, everyone.

5. The People vs. O.J. Simpson (FX). The unmissable TV event of the first part of the year was this 10-part miniseries from Ryan Murphy, a detailed history of the racial, social and legal ramifications of what was, for many of us, the Trial of the Century. John Travolta was weird as Robert Shapiro, David Schwimmer surprising as Robert Kardashian, but it was Sarah Paulson’s inhabiting (and humanizing) of Marcia Clark that made it so compelling. More than 20 years after the events it portrayed, we finally have perspective to see where we were… and how far we’ve come.

4. Westworld (HBO). Dreamy and moody, but with an explosive heart, this TV reimagining of Michael Crichton’s 1970s film (which itself formed the template for Jurassic Park), in which robots are willingly abused by humans at a pricey amusement park until they start to fight back, was the must-watch fall show, and one of two that upended our conceptions about technology (see also Black Mirror, below).

3. Black Mirror (Netflix). Netflix began streaming all three (very short) seasons of this British anthology series, where modernity and technology are as problematic as beneficial: Imagine a world where strangers can Yelp-review you (and a low enough score keeps you from getting a mortgage), or where you awake to go on the run from armed hunters while cell-phone obsessed voyeurs film your every move but refuse to help? These are some of the twisted concepts presented here, all with new casts, plots and styles. It’s addictingly dark and perversely funny while occasionally terrifying.

3. Atlanta (FX). Donald Glover created and stars in this dramedy about an ambitious but aimless black man trying to balance fatherhood, relationships, work, money and the music industry. With deadpan brilliance and a knowing and unexpected frank take on race, it was 2016’s sleeper.

1. The Real O’Neals (ABC). One of the best network sitcoms since Modern Family, this good-natured and smart comedy is about an Irish Catholic family in Chicago violating their church’s doctrines against divorce and homosexuality, but doing so with love. Tonally reminiscent of My Name Is Earl, it’s a great ensemble piece with savvy writing about coming out as a teen.

Other great new shows in 2016: Stranger Things (Netflix); Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (Netflix); This is Us (NBC); Baskets (FX); Fleabag (Amazon Prime); Sherlock: The Abominable Bride (PBS); Speechless (ABC); Luke Cage (Netflix).

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition December 30, 2016.

For years, we’ve been big fans on the Podcast Throwing Shade — which, as they say, addresses issues important to women and gay men, so basically like a talk show on Lifetime TV. The hosts, Bryan Safi and Erin Gibson, are native Texans with a dishy, funny but socially-conscious take on the world. We discussed all that with them last summer in this interview. At that time, they talked about their new TV show — part current affairs, part pre-recorded bits — which would begin airing this month. Well, that time has come! Tonight on TVLand at 9:30 p.m. local time, Throwing Shade, the TV program, will make its debut. It’s on my season pass already, and I hope y’all will show your support as well. During Fauxnauguration Week, we could all use a little shade.

Out magician Michael Carbonaro pranks new victims on the latest season of ‘The Carbonaro Effect’

Michael Carbonaro is driving through Oklahoma, talking with me on his cell phone, when he hits a dead patch and the call drops. When we get reconnected, he has a perfect excuse.

“I was practicing a vanishing act,” he says impishly.

You might be tempted to believe him. He’s made a career in recent years as a TV prankster — first in segments on The Tonight Show, later on his own series
The Carbonaro Effect, which just started its third season on TruTV. A kind of magic version of Candid Camera, Carbonaro is adept at fooling his victims … er, subjects… by making himself disappear and reappear moments later, convincing them that moon rocks contain alien life forms and that doughnuts can be so fluffy, they actually are lighter than air. So making a call end suspiciously is no problem — I was just happy he didn’t show up under my desk.

The series is the culmination of a career spent doing in-person magic, which he started working on as a goofy gay kid. Now he’s a cute-as-a-button TV star… but his live performances continue to energize him.

“Nothing will be more magical than live theater — that’s what I did my whole life,” Carbonaro says. “There is nothing like that energy. Onstage, when there’s a connection with the audience, is a kind of magic… whether that’s with one person or an audience of thousands. I have a special place in my heart, as a lot of actors do, for live theater.”

So, wait … does Carbonaro consider himself an actor? (He has reason to — he’s appeared in several movies and TV shows, and attended the Tisch School for the Arts at NYU.)

“I think about that every day — how to define what I do,” he says. “I’ve kind of landed on being an ‘entertainer.’ [A magician] falls under the umbrella of acting, it’s just that it’s more openly discussed — a magician is openly saying, ‘You are being fooled,’” while an actor tries to hide that fact.

Indeed, it’s the social contract between magician and audience that is difficult to put his finger on … he just knows it when he experiences it.

“One time we really made someone experience moments of déjà vu,” he recalls as a standout prank. “And I’ve done a lot on the show [involving] teleportation, and people say to me, ‘You must have a twin,’ but I don’t. This season, I did [a prank] in a Chicago train station where I convince the other person that they teleported. It turned out amazing, and boy is [the woman] relieved when I let her off the hook.”

Letting the subjects in on the gag after the fact is an essential element in the series; he’s sometimes so convincing the unsuspecting person worries they have lost their own sanity, or suffered a brain injury.

“I have to be riding with them [on the arc of the prank],” he says. “It’s a real fine line — sometimes I think, I have to monitor this one closely.’ I had one guy who was close to going to the emergency room.”

Not every prank works, of course, in part because Carbonaro is becoming famous enough that he occasionally gets spotted by one of his victims.

“People have recognized me before, but I even when they do, I still give it a shot — I try to convince them I’m not me, or go ahead with the [gag]. If there’s a fun play to be had with it, I try it. And of course we ask their permission afterward to be on the show. I had this one guy say he would rather not [sign the release] so he left and we said, ‘Well, we’ll just try it again with someone else.’ But then five minutes later he came walking back in to have a selfie with you and get an autograph. I said I’d do it if he gave us permission.” The man agreed.

For anyone who suspects Carbonaro is only able to pull off his TV stunts with the magic of film editing, all you have to do is attend one of his live shows — he was in Dallas early last month — to know he’s got mad skills.

“There’s a section of the live show where I do a mind reading act, and people say to me after, ‘Now I know the rest was magic, but you were actually reading minds there, right?’ No! It’s all magic. But people really want to believe.”

Planning a season of the TV show, though, doesn’t follow a formula. There’s something about it that — say it with — seems magical.

“It’s a bizarre recipe,” Carbonaro says. “I work with an amazing team of five magicians who I’ve known since I was a kid — some I met at a magic camp. One might say, ‘Ya know that trick where this happens? How about we do that in the context of a science store?’ How that turns into 66 episodes and three seasons, I have no idea.”

Which is not to say he’s exhausted his well of pranks — far from it.

“There’s a lot I still wanna pull off,” he says. “We’re just scratching the surface.” 

— Arnold Wayne Jones

The Carbonaro Effect airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on TruTV. 

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition February 03, 2017.

Early in her career, she stole our queer hearts as Toni Collette’s freewheeling yang in 1994’s buddy comedy Muriel’s Wedding, but before long, Rachel Griffiths became one of our most passionate allies both on- and off-screen.

In 2001, the Aussie actress starred as Brenda Chenowith, the enigmatic, gender-subverting girlfriend-turned-wife of prodigal son Nate Fisher (Peter Krause) in HBO’s Emmy-winning landmark series Six Feet Under, out creator Alan Ball’s gay-inclusive, darkly comic rumination on life and death. A year after Six Feet Under concluded in 2006, Griffiths made the leap from the Fishers to the Walkers, the family at the center of ABC’s Brothers and Sisters, also celebrated for its LGBT representation.

Now, Griffiths is taking her longtime queer advocacy to the next level with When We Rise, which began airing Monday night and pick up for three more installments tonight. (Read our interview with the show’s writer/director here.) The miniseries seeks to connect with the heart (not the politics) of Americans through real family stories, something Griffiths’ gay-affirming résumé certainly reflects.

Our Chris Azzopardi spoke with the Emmy- and Oscar-nominated actress about her involvement, and her identification with the queer community.

Dallas Voice: In When We Rise, you play Diane, who’s raising a daughter with women’s rights activist Roma Guy, portrayed by Mary-Louise Parker. What are your thoughts on bringing the lesbian-led blended family dynamic to audiences on a mainstream network like ABC?  Rachel Griffiths: Brothers and Sisters was on ABC at the same time as Modern Family, and we had Will & Grace [on NBC], so I didn’t have any kind of surprise it was on a network, because ultimately it is about family — it’s about the “we” of gay, lesbian, transgender lives, not the “they” or the “others.” So, for me, to move these people’s lives away from the premium cable niche — I love that by not being on a niche network, there wasn’t a pressure to be noisy in a more sexual way. We’ve kind of moved past having to explore that.

That’s there in other shows if you want it, particularly with women’s lives. We’ve had The L Word, where the women are identified first off in the show by being lesbians. But Roma and Diane’s trouble was, first, [being] women — 51 percent of the population — then the gay/lesbian, then it was understanding the power of how those two movements can come together.

Your roles on both TV and in film suggest that you appreciate portrayals of social and political issues that are reflected through a personal lens.  I absolutely love that. I think if people aren’t living in a wider sociological space, they’re in a bubble. Growing up, my favorite movies actually were World War II movies — get motor bikes and outdo the Nazis. I was just really primed by seeing political moments intersecting with personal and moral choices, and the drama of that.

That certainly explains your career trajectory.  With a few exceptions!

How do you feel knowing that a half century after the liberation movement of the late ’60s and ’70s we’re still, to some extent, fighting the same fights that are being fought in When We Rise?  The last few years have definitely been a wakeup call of thinking that progression is always forward moving. I think we really thought progression was a simple, straightforward thing, so it’s definitely a shock that things go backward and forward. Millennials and the younger generation are very comfortable in the gay, lesbian and transgender space, and their comfort level is very high, so it’s a shock to see an older generation insist on moving back. I think for many within that younger generation, when they hear certain slogans about how great America used to be, we know that was true for white men, but not necessarily true for all other people.

Which is the crux of the Trump administration. But you’re right: The pendulum swings back and forth, and now we’ve entered a time when progressives are once again stepping up to the plate, and I think younger generations feel compelled to become activists and stand up against this pushback.  I think there are also periods where you have young presidents who are really representing a moment in time, and then we get an old president who is a status quo president. So, I think people are afraid of too much change too fast, and he’s the tipping point.

There’s been a lot to be afraid of these last 16 years, and if you just read the news or tune into the news cycle, you’re conditioned to think we live in the most vulnerable time in human history, which of course you and I know we don’t. And I will say, I’ve got two little American girls and they have their little anxious moments, and I still tell them that there’s never been a greater time to be born as an American female than now. Never has she had more opportunities. Never has she had a stronger voice. And never has she had more reasons to be confident… gay or straight. I’d still say now is a better time to be gay anywhere in the world.

Growing up in Melbourne, Australia, what was your introduction to the LGBT community?  There were huge rumors at school that George Michael was gay. I was like, “No, no, really?!” And Freddie Mercury had AIDS. “No, he’s not gay, too!” It was kind of a mix of probably negative and controversial, I would say, in a Catholic backwater.

I remember there was a gorgeous, contemporary boy and the rumors in the parish: He wasn’t well, he was a drug addict and he died of a heroin overdose, and he was from a big Catholic family. I had only recently learned that he died of HIV/AIDS. So, the family would have rather said he was an addict and died, when he was actually living a very loved life with his partner and died very young. Died at 24, I think.

In 2012, you performed in the Australian production of Dustin Lance Black’s play 8, centered on California’s controversial Proposition 8. Was that your introduction to Dustin?  Apparently, we met in the valley for a project. I was the hugest fan of Milk. As a history lover, what I loved about Milk, which I kind of sat down somewhat dutifully to be educated with, and I think the same holds true for this piece: how committed he is to elevating these heroes that are gay, lesbian and straight. And perhaps my first introduction to that topic and feeling the outrageous injustice of how they were treated in their own time was seeing the Alan Turing play [1986’s Breaking the Code] at the West End [in London]. I was 19 and that was my introduction to probably the key hero of World War II, who was a gay man and died tortured and broken for his own sexuality. I recall the wrongfulness, and I think had that not been made [into a movie], Lance would’ve made that story as well.

In When We Rise, you say, “Gay dads: I wonder if that will ever be a thing.” It’s kind of hysterical, but also true.  Not very long ago I really remember thinking, “Gay marriage — that’ll never be a thing.” Even being gay and lesbian supportive, the actual idea… there were just enormous strides being made very quickly. And in my country, Australia, gay and lesbians still cannot marry and are denied fundamental rights to celebrate their unions.

But it’s a wonderful thing, the Bill of Rights. It can be used in other countries very much as a political football, and it’s just the most inspiring document that human beings have ever come up with as a model and ideal to which we should move forward. And I still believe that that document is going at its strongest and most triumphant when all “men” includes all _people_: men and women, gay and straight, white and colored, Christian and non-Christians.

How did you end up playing Diane?  I knew the project was on, and I read the material and just fell in love with it. I was in LA and got to meet with him… and I just got really lucky, I think! With Diane, just holding the heads of dying men, having no answers, and then going home feeling helpless and yet finding the mettle to get up and return and do it all again and handle all the bodily fluids in a plague that had no known source was just heroic bravery. I love that balance — it takes many different styles of work to fight these battles. Hers is through duty and service, not the megaphone.

In addition to When We Rise, you’ve been a part of many landmark moments in LGBT programming over the last 15-plus years. Is there a project that stands out to you as being particularly groundbreaking?  I think they all have been in their own way. Of course, Six Feet Under was massively groundbreaking in that that was the first time I recall there being a gay member of a family not defined by his otherness or his trouble in reconciling it all. And I think this is groundbreaking in its lesbian characters. I love the article somebody wrote “Why Is TV Killing Its Queer Women?” It was really interesting. So, I think there are fewer lesbian characters than gay characters probably because they’re not as fabulous with fashion and cute, funny quips.

I think this is groundbreaking for its representation of gay women on network TV and really exploring the day-to-day life of many lesbians, which is not looking hot, or picking up girls in bars, or talking about sex. It’s talking about picking up the kids and, “Oh my god, how can I possibly pay for my family and get better gender equity and pay?”

Six Feet Under is still my favorite TV show ever.  I think it’s mine too, next to M*A*S*H. My “straight” show is M*A*S*H, which really defined me and half of Brenda Chenowith. I was always like, “Why can’t a woman be a guy on screen?” Just that kind of badly behaved and morally righteous person, but absolutely incorrigible.

What kind of mark did Six Feet Under leave on you?  I think it definitely has left a career mark, not just because it was an enormous success, but pushing the boundaries of women in television and unpredictable modules of likability. I think [Alan Ball] really explored a depth and a breadth of key archetypes. I was really on that show as the girlfriend — then there was the mom, the bratty teen daughter, the Latino wife. He blew the female stereotypes out, and the legacy of that is for all women in television to enjoy on that level.

I was also so proud to be a part of a show that could speak to death and dying and serious themes of human struggle at a time when no other show was doing that. That was a big draw for me, and that [pilot] script that I read, to this day is possibly the best script that’s ever been sent to me with my name actually on it. And the feedback we had from people in the wake of Sept. 11 about how that show nurtured and comforted and enabled them to have conversations they didn’t know how to have — that was really incredible.

[Alan] just kind of found a common space, and said the American family is all these things. It is gay. It is straight. It is lesbian. It is unsure. It is an artist. It is a mother whose personal dreams are not being met. It is a young woman trying to find her identity in a postmodern world. It can be all these things.

If you were watching Saturday Night Live this weekend, you probably saw the spoof teaser for a new Logo show called Fire Island. But until today, we didn’t know when to expect the show to actually premiere. Now we do. The reality series following gay men vacationing on the famed gay resort will hit the airwaves starting on April 27, at 7 p.m. local time.