The late 19th century — the Victorian Era in Britain, the period of the robber barons and the ante-bellum Gilded Age here in the U.S. — was, especially for novelists, an exciting time in the post-Industrial Revolutionary period. Technologies like photography, the steam engine, telegraphy and medical sciences from Pasteur’s microbiology to Freud’s psychoanalysis, were advancing at a rate that wouldn’t be seen again until the 1990s Information Age brought about by the internet. Tribalism, superstition and small-town thinking were giving way to megalopolises with educated men (and finally women!) engaged in a second Enlightenment.

The problems, of course, was that the old ways were stubborn and conflicted with modern thinking. (Imagine living in a time when leaders yelled “fake news!” everytime they were confronted with something they couldn’t understand, and labeled “junk science” any complicated issue posited by people smarter than them. Go ahead, I’ll give you a second.) we have Arthur Conan Doyle to thank for popularizing the scientific method via his avatar Sherlock Holmes, assisted by a doctor, no less, named Watson. The thinking that they represented invented the 20th century.

So it has been a wonder that historian and novelist Caleb Carr’s juicy, literary 1994 novel The Alienist — set in New York during the fin-de-siecle of the 19th century — took so long to make it to the screen. A modern-day Holmes, Carr’s hero is Laszlo Kreizler is an “alienist,” an old-timey name for the budding science of psychology and even fingerprinting. Carr threw in real-life folks like NYC police commission Teddy Roosevelt, financier J.P. Morgan and a lurid tale of a serial killer to create an American historical novel akin to Sherlock tackling the Jack the Ripper case. (The film Murder by Decree and the comic book From Hell put Holmes himself into that case.) That flexibility gave Carr to opportunity to relish the painstaking realities of 1896 New York while winking to a modern reader about the rightness of his hero’s positions — we know his method is more correct than the third-degree beating preferred by the beat cops of the time.

All of which is to say, I have been waiting for the long-delayed adaptation of The Alienist for more than two decades. And now it arrives, courtesy of a TNT miniseries. And… so far, it’s a disappointment.

Daniel Bruhl plays Kreizler, the detached, methodical title character, who employs John Moore (Luke Evans), an illustrator for the New York Times as his Watson, to help prove that the murders of young gay male prostitutes weren’t committed by the man the police targeted but a sociopath with a plan. The police mock his style; but employing the newly-endorsed method of fingerprint analysis, he goes on a quest to unearth a monster in our midst.

And how do we know? Because the teleplay tell us that, openly and repeatedly. There’s little subtlety in the storytelling. At one point in the two episodes made available for critique, Kreizler literally says aloud to his gathered team that he will have to bring himself to the brink of madness in order to find the killer. That’s a point much better shows than said, which contributes to the obviousness of the scripts. There’s a modicum of grimy atmospherics, and the directors don’t shy from explicit discussions of the sexual proclivities of men who frequent call boys dressed as girls, but it feels much more prurient than evocative. Bruhl is capable but so far, little has been required of him; Evans is underwhelming as his aggressive assistant; Dakota Fanning, as the lone woman working for the police, sounds more like a suffragette than an investigator. It’s so interested in hammering home its messages, that it overshares.

Perhaps the show will hit its stride with time. I’ll stick with it. But after nearly a quarter century’s wait for a definitive adaptation, it’s difficult not to feel a little alienated by what made it to screen.

Airs Mondays on TNT starting tonight.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

The post TV review: Long awaited, ‘The Alienist’ underwhelms appeared first on Dallas Voice.

The gay co-creator and co-star  of the camptastic Netflix comedy ‘Schitt’s Creek’ on love, humor  and family

If you ever happen to bump into Dan Levy, thank him for Schitt’s Creek, his super-bingeable comedic riff on a once-affluent family forced to live like fish out of Perrier in the podunk Canadian town the show is named after. And thank him, he who created and developed the series — which premiered in 2015 on Pop TV (and can also be seen on Netflix) — for willfully remaining single only to craft and deliver more rib-tickling bons mots for the show’s fourth (and most affectionate) season, which is out now. Thank him again, while you’re at it, because the 34-year-old former MTV Canada co-host has somehow found the time to create yet another queer-themed project that he tells me is in the works.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For now, we have David Rose (Levy), replete with his color-averse apparel and drop-crotch pants, general distaste for people, and his animated and generally disgusted facial contortions worn like memes in the making. Johnny, David’s perpetually on-edge father, is played by real-life father and American Pie and Best in Show actor Eugene Levy, who also serves as the comedy’s co-creator. Together they’ve developed both a comedic knockout and a rich what-if satire of Kardashian life. Schitt’s Creek also stars Catherine O’Hara, as the deliciously histrionic wig-loving family matriarch and former soap star Moira, and Annie Murphy as Alexis, the self-involved-but-somehow-sweet daughter who once argued with David over who would get murdered first in their sketchy new motel digs.

Via an allegorical wine conversation with hotel co-owner Stevie Budd (Emily Hampshire) presented in the show’s first season, Schitt’s Creek expertly tackled David’s pansexuality (“I do drink red wine, but I also drink white wine; I like the wine, not the label”). Then there was a throuple, and now there’s Patrick (Noah Reid), a yin-yang match so absolutely perfect for David — notice all the ways he challenges David, especially with the potential mortification of this season’s open-mike night at the store they co-own together — you’d be heartbroken if they didn’t last.

Read on as Levy freewheeled his way through our conversation about living vicariously through David and Patrick’s loving relationship, opening the minds of parents with queer kids, and how David has influenced him to “to try to live my life more out loud.”             

— Chris Azzopardi

Dallas Voice: As a gay man, how personally rewarding is it to you to have one of the healthiest, most normal relationships on the show be between two queer men?

Dan Levy: You know, all I really can do is think back to a time when I didn’t think being myself was ever going to be a possibility. It’s such a full circle moment for me right now to be writing this love story for them and to look back at it and just remember that there was a time in my life when I honestly didn’t think that would be a possibility for myself. So, it’s incredible. And to have the network support to really be able to tell the kinds of stories that I want to tell with it and not have any interference is rare and a privilege. When you have that kind of freedom, there’s also a certain level of responsibility to try and tell the most authentic story you possibly can. I think with these two characters I didn’t want to reduce it to caricature. I didn’t want it to be some kind of lesson that we’re trying to ram down someone’s throat. It was really about presenting a story of two people who have found love with each other.

You’ve made very deliberate choices regarding the treatment of David’s sexuality both as it relates to him but also as it relates to the other people in his life.

Personally, I never learn when someone is trying to teach me something. I learn through experience, and presenting complete tolerance and acceptance across the board is the only scenario that should be existing right now. I want to show this without trying to make it feel like an educational lesson for people who don’t quite understand it.

The letters that I’ve gotten from families who are more conservative-leaning and who have never quite understood the fight — to have letters from these people explaining that they’ve never had a point of entry before, that was the most amazing and eye-opening part of this whole conversation. In a way, it opened my eyes to understanding them a little bit better and understanding that sometimes I look at it with, “How can I not see the bigotry?” But at the same time, if people do not know what they do not know, all you can try to do is guide them with a gentle hand.

You guided Larry King with a gentle hand last year when you were on Larry King Now to  talk about the show. It was really interesting to watch the dynamic between you and Larry as you explained pansexuality to him — that must’ve opened up a lot of eyes who hadn’t even heard the word “pansexual.”

It’s about having conversations. We should have more of them. Talk to people instead of coming at things with bats swinging — and don’t get me wrong, there are times when that is absolutely necessary. But I think when it comes to the world of sexuality, which is ever-changing, try to have a conversation with people and lead them down the path of acceptance by way of setting an example.

I’ve had great conversations with people on the streets who’ve come up and told me that when they came out of the closet their parents didn’t quite understand them, but by watching the show and seeing how accepting Johnny and Moira Rose are to their kids — the fact that it was never a question — allows them to feel safer, allows them to feel like, “Oh, why am I having such a problem with it when these people who I’ve come to know and love are not asking the same questions that I’m asking? Why am I asking them then?” And it’s changed the conversation in their house. You can’t ask for a more rewarding takeaway from the experience.

Did you need characters like them when you were younger?

It’s interesting, because it’s still kind of an ongoing conversation on the show in terms of Patrick being fresh out of the closet and exploring what that means. There’s fear on either side. And, yes, I grew up knowing that my parents ultimately would not have a problem with it, but when you’re going through that and you’re internalizing that much fear you get to a point where you ask yourself, “Well, maybe they will have a problem with it; maybe I’m misreading the situation.” There are so many questions that I think we’re forced to ask ourselves because we’re alone in that process.

Which show with queer themes did you gravitate toward most as you were coming into your own?
I guess it would be Will & Grace. I think Will & Grace really opened up the conversation. My So-Called Life affected me more just because I was such a huge fan of the show. I think we’ve come a long way, and there’s still a long way to go, but all you can really do is seize the opportunities that are given to you and try and make good with the power that TV can offer.

I watched the sixth episode of the new season, “Open Mic,” and it was the first time that I ugly cried watching the show. In fact, until then, I hadn’t cried listening to Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” either. When is the last time you serenaded a man?

Never! Because the intention is always to keep them! [That scene] all stems from a conversation I had with a friend of mine who was seeing someone who chose to sing to them and it really just disrupted the whole momentum of their relationship because, unlike Noah who has such a beautiful voice, this person did not, and it just didn’t work out in the end. But I knew Noah could sing, and I knew he was a musician going into it, so it was always my intention to somehow find a way for him to sing.

You know, I don’t love writing dialogue where people are talking about their feelings. I would much rather bring some fun, interesting and dynamic ways of showing that kind of feeling, and the idea that David would be so off-put and embarrassed by his partner choosing to sing in front of a room full of people — and then to know that Noah has this voice, and that in the end we could use this as a device to really cement them as a couple in ways that I don’t think they even expected — was really special.

And I had always had this fondness for the lyrics for that song, and for a long time whenever it came on at a bar or something, I would always be the person turning to someone saying, “The lyrics to this song are really beautiful.” When you’re listening to the Tina Turner version it’s just a pop song and people are like, “Yeah, I know, it’s fine,” and it’s like, “No, no, no — the lyrics are really beautiful.” So, when we thought of this idea, it was the only option, this idea that Patrick would sort of tease David with a flashy pop song but make it his own.

What is so lovely about that scene is it really subverts stereotypes about small town small-mindedness — the townies are there, and they’re celebrating Patrick and David’s love for each other right along with them.

It was our intention from the get-go to never make the town the butt of the joke and to always make the family sort of the joke. We wanted the town to always be this safety net for these people, and for them to always feel safe there.

Well, it gave me lots of hope.

Oh, good! That’s what we’re aiming to do, to be just a bit of a safe place for people for 21 minutes and 50 seconds a week.

Where does the line between Dan Levy and David Rose start and end?

Uh, there’s a big one! It’s interesting. Yeah, I would kill for his confidence.

I’d kill for some of his style. Every time I watch him I’m like, “Clearly, I need more black and I need more flow.”

[Laughs] It’s funny, ‘cause in promoting the show we talked to someone who was going through some of the outfits and it was sort of a “yea” or “nay” situation and it came upon the outfit that we wear when we’re doing the number [in Episode 3, “Asbestos Fest”]. I’m in, like, black with a baby’s breath sweater with matching pants and the person decided to “nay” the outfit, and I had to gently tell her that those pants were actually my own from home! Generally speaking, I wouldn’t wear it with a matching top, but I did wear it at one point in my real life.

I think I’ve always been excited about fashion, so to be able to style the show with our costume designer really just scratches that itch for me. As a character, though, I don’t think we’re alike. I think some of our neuroses probably exist — the lack of patience [laughs] — but you know, it’s funny, you start the first season of the show and these people are, on paper at least, really hard pills to swallow, and the intention of the show was to always make the takeaway “love doesn’t cost any money” and these people will slowly start to realize that. My takeaway from David has been to try to live my life more out loud because I think his unabashedness when it comes to just being authentically himself at all times is something I wish I employed in my own life.

But you do seem to be much more open about your sexuality than before the show.

I think when you start out it’s a really tough track to navigate. You can be really comfortable in your personal life, but the professional world is a very different beast. When gossip blogs were outing people — I really do feel like it’s such a tender thing; it’s a very sensitive thing for people, and there should be no pressure to do anything until you’re ready. I do know that there’s obligation, obviously, that comes with being someone who’s in the public eye and being able to use that, but for me it was just that you grow into yourself and you grow into what you want to share with people publicly. Because yeah, I do think that conversation is a tricky one, and actually, I am sort of naturally quite private and don’t like attention. (Laughs)

Last year your co-star Emily Hampshire, who plays Stevie, told me men expect her to be Stevie on dates and that she feels bad she’s not.

I know. She always says that: “Stevie’s so cool … and then I show up.” [Laughs]

Do you have an example of that happening to you?

Being a disappointment to people? Yes! … No — I think David has brought out the best in me as a person in terms of what I want to stand for and the kinds of things I want to fight for. I also have realized in ways that I never did before the reach that this show has to actually affect change in people’s homes, and you know, you have to run with that and you have to wave that flag proudly because there’s a lot of opposition out there. You have to constantly make sure that your megaphone is being heard over all the noise, which is why it was such a thrill for GLAAD to sponsor our L.A. event and to participate in the fundraising campaign. And again, you get to see people coming out of the woodwork and people of all different sort of backgrounds sending love to David and Patrick. It’s incredible to watch.

They’ve instilled hope that, maybe, people aren’t just looking for a quickie on Grindr.

Exactly.

It’s refreshing.

Yeah, it’s been really fun to play, and in a way, I often wonder if I wrote that as almost some kind of personal manifestation. If you write it, they will come.

Are they coming?

Not at the moment, but hopefully soon. It’s all so tricky because we put so much of our times into this show and, for me, it’s a 13-month commitment, so it’s hard to be open and available to someone in a relationship when my eye will always tend to wander back to the show. It’s finding the balance. But yeah … one day.

Are you interested in creating or playing more realistic portrayals of queerness that cut beyond caricature in the way David has?

Of course, yeah. There is a new show that I’m working on right now with quite an amazing queer character that I quite love. I wish I could tell you more about it. It’s pretty fun, and if it all works out we will talk again and I will give you the lowdown. But yes, if all goes to plan then there might be a new show coming out in the next couple of years.

The post Dan Levy is da Schitt appeared first on Dallas Voice.

In 1996, Dana Carvey, the breakout star of mid-’80s SNL’s deep bench, was the top sketch comedian in a generation, so the idea that he would launch a primetime network series seemed like a no-brainer. He and producer Robert Smigel assembled a creative team of then-nobodies, among them Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Louis C.K., Charlie Kaufman, Bob Odenkirk, Robert Carlock and a host of now-legends, who wrote and performed the surefire mid-season hit, The Dana Carvey Show.

It ran for seven miserable episodes.

Now, more 20 years later, the team reconvenes to do a post-mortem on one of the greatest failures in broadcast history. Too Funny to Fail: The Life and Death of the Dana Carvey Show was either ahead of its time or a hubristic boondoggle, where too-smart-for-their-own-good comedy artists bucked the network and even insulted their sponsors in search of a larf. But while a core coterie of fans saw the genius, the audience from their lead-in show, the massive, middle-brow hit Home Improvement, darted like lemmings in the 8:30 time slot, costing ABC a fortune and Carvey tons of credibility.

The documentary, which airs exclusively on Hulu, is full of Inside Baseball behind-the-scenes anecdotes, hilarious recollections and the good nature of people who acknowledge their failure, but have the distance to be candid about their own errors. It’s said comedy equals tragedy plus time; by that measure the tragedy that was The Dana Carvey Show now feels like comic brilliance.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

The post WHAT WE’RE WATCHING: ‘Too Funny to Fail’ appeared first on Dallas Voice.

Remember when the word “queer” was an insult hurled by homophobes against gay people? Remember a time before the words “metrosexual” and “zhuzh” has entered the lexicon? If not, good for you. But either way, we have a TV show to thank for it. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was a cultural phenomenon from 2002–06, making household names out of Carson Kressley and Ted Allen and doing extreme makeovers before that term existed, either. It ran its course, but all things just keep getting better… especially given a lapse in time. (Will & Grace, X Files, Roseanne…. We’re looking at you.)

The new incarnation of the show, called simply Queer Eye, has returned via Netflix for an eight-episode tryout, and what a welcome return it is. The set-up is essentially the same, with five out gay men descending on schlubby, mostly middle-aged straight men from Greater Atlanta, to teach them how to live better lives with style. I say mostly, because one notable episode involves AJ, a ripped, shy but secretly freaky gay man who hasn’t come out yet. If you’re not sobbing openly by the end, you might wanna seek counseling. And that happens over and over.

Forget the tongue-clucking about how the show promotes stereotypes, and just enjoy what it has to offer: Feelings of pride, hope and joy. Hey, we’re called “gay” for a reason.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

The post WHAT WE’RE STREAMING: ‘Queer Eye’ on Netflix appeared first on Dallas Voice.

She’s a polarizing figure, but we’re still anxious to see the rebooted sitcom break new ground

Roseanne Barr knows how to keep tongues wagging. From her infamous bungling of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and my-way-or-the-highway tyranny on the set of her groundbreaking sitcom to her failed presidential bid and accusation that Ireland (yes, the whole darn country) is anti-Semitic, the self-proclaimed domestic goddess has been a controversial pop-culture mainstay for more than 30 years.

This month, the legendary comedienne will return with her original TV family and friends to ABC’s primetime lineup tonight. How will she make us laugh, side-eye, and ask WTF next? Who knows, but here are six things I’d like to see the series tackle in Season 10.

Gay Darlene. In the finale of Roseanne’s original run, it was revealed by newly widowed matriarch Roseanne that her daughter Darlene (Sara Gilbert) was married to her sister Becky’s (Lecy Goranson) husband Mark (the late Glenn Quinn), not his brother David (Johnny Galecki), whom she had been with since Season 4. The latter storyline was explained as a fictional plot in a story that Roseanne had written about her life, which, as it turned out, encompassed the entire series. Nothing that we had watched over the past nine years was as it seemed. That fan-disappointing decision will be retconned in the reboot, leaving everything leading up to S9 of the original series as canon. Praise Jesus. In the reboot, however, Darlene and David will be separated, opening up the potential opportunity for her to date women, which seems appropriate since Sara Gilbert is a lesbian in a real life. Just don’t expect it to happen immediately since Darlene’s 9-year-old gender-nonconforming son Mark (Ames McNamara) will be the basis for any initial LGBT diversity storylines. Not complaining, though; representation is representation.

George Clooney cameo. Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) was known for her revolving door of one-night stands and sometimes boyfriends — and a very tumultuous but short-lived marriage to her baby daddy Fred (Michael O’Keeffe) — but none shared the kind of chemistry with her as first-season love interest, Booker, played by George Clooney. Of course, GC’s a big-shot Hollywood movie star now — and has been for the past 20 years — so it’s probably a long shot that he’ll make a guest appearance. On the other hand, the Oscar-nominated Laurie Metcalf is a star in her own right, and Friends landed Brad Pitt and Julie Roberts in its heyday, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

The return of Kathy Bowman. Roseanne and Dan Conner (John Goodman) dealt with their fair share of neighbors over the years — who could forget the elderly nudists? — but the most formidable was “needle-butt” Kathy Bowman (Meagen Fay), Roseanne’s arch-nemesis from the minute she and her husband Jerry moved next door to 714 Delaware St. It was a rivalry for the ages until Roseanne inadvertently helped burglars dressed as good Samaritans (one of whom looked like Bob Hope) rob Kathy’s house, which ultimately drove the snippy housewife back to her hometown of Chicago. Fay is still a fixture on television — she most recently guested on ABC’s Dr. Ken — and if the network knows what’s good for its loyal Roseanne lovers, she’ll at least make a pit stop in Lanford one more time.

All the grown-up babies. When we last left the Conners in 1997, Roseanne had baby Jerry Garcia, Jackie had baby Andy, and Darlene had just popped out baby Harris before the series finale. Baby Harris will be featured in the revival (now a teenager of 14 years old instead of the actual age of 21 she would be in real time) — as will her brother Mark and cousin Mary (Jayden Rey), daughter of D.J. Conner (Michael Fishman). As for Jerry Garcia and Andy, they’re still part of the continuity, according to Roseanne, but the characters will not appear in Season 10.

Dan’s boat. What ever happened to Dan’s boat? Some Roseanne-philes consider it a casualty of the writers’ room, just another abandoned plot point, while others seem to remember Dan’s mentally ill mother setting it on fire. Whatever the truth is — which is hard to discern from a show like Roseanne — I hope it makes a comeback. If they can resurrect Dan from the dead (it was revealed he died of a heart attack in the series finale), surely they can put a half-completed boat back up on cinderblocks.

Topical subject matter. One of the greatest legacies of Roseanne, and why it was a top 20 show for eight of its nine seasons (No. 1 overall in 1989), is that it never shied away from controversial subject matter. From first periods and teenage masturbation to gay marriage and race relations, Roseanne blazed a trail across the television landscape, the effects of which can still be seen in sitcoms today. You can expect more of the same from the reboot — Roseanne the comedienne is still as feisty as ever — as they tackle the Trump administration (Roseanne the character admits she voted for the kook in an early episode), gender-identity issues, for-hire surrogacy, and mixed-race families. Throw an episode about gun control in there and we’re halfway to an Emmy nom.

—Mikey Rox

The post Make ‘Roseanne’ great again appeared first on Dallas Voice.

The comedian returns to a TV classic, and doesn’t mince words on Roseanne’s politics and Kathy Griffin’s activism

Before unloading her frank thoughts on TV co-star Roseanne Barr’s alt-right politics and fellow comic Kathy Griffin’s viral Trump-beheading pic (“It just wasn’t funny”), Sandra Bernhard proclaims herself quite aptly as “no-nonsense.” That has been, after all, her way since the ’70s, when lambasting Hollywood’s who’s-who first proved lucrative for the fearless comedian, actress and musician.

Then, from 1991-1997, she famously put a face to bisexuality not just as herself – Bernhard was out from the get-go — but as Nancy Bartlett on ABC’s hit sitcom Roseanne. Introduced in season four as the estranged lesbian wife of Arnie Thomas (Tom Arnold), Nancy, who later came out as bisexual, gets chummy with Roseanne Conner and Jackie Harris, Roseanne’s younger sister (Laurie Metcalf).

Bernhard, 62, will revisit her groundbreaking character during the show’s revival (its second week begins tonight; it has already been renewed for a second season). As for the controversy regarding Roseanne and her TV alter ego’s support for President Trump? “Roseanne is gonna be another round of really fun and really smart television,” she tells me. “Roseanne has never turned on the gay community. Roseanne likes to stir the pot. She always has. So, I guess that’s the way she’s doing it now, and I don’t agree with any of the Trump shit, but I think she’ll transcend that and the show will still be amazing.”

— Chris Azzopardi

Dallas Voice: What can we expect politically from the Roseanne reboot?  Sandra Bernhard: I think they’re gonna do a deep dive into where the working class is at right now. I mean, maybe not as deep as you would need, considering that half of the working class who don’t have their industrial-ass jobs anymore are strung out on opioids. That’s not very much fun; I don’t think they’ll go there [laughs]. But I think we’re in a real crossroads in this country, and Roseanne has always been good at revealing that, and at the same time making it funny and moving and insightful. I’m only in the last episode, so I don’t know exactly how they’re approaching it. I know there will be very personal stories like there always were, as opposed to globalizing it. I think that’s what makes the show special.

I imagine you’ve been hearing about the backlash Roseanne’s politics have ignited since the reboot was announced.  I was hearing about that way before they announced the reboot, and I just dropped out of the conversation because I don’t want to get into that on Twitter. You can’t do that; it goes nowhere. And everybody who makes political decisions also has to live with the fallout. That goes for famous, successful people and for people on the street. If you voted for Trump and you thought it was gonna be a lark and funny, the results are right there in front of you every day.

My hope is that it might bridge some severe societal gaps, maybe open some minds, maybe even my own. But it’s been very difficult for people who didn’t vote for Trump to even begin to understand or empathize with someone who supported him.  I don’t have any empathy for people who voted for him. Honestly, I really don’t. It’s obvious that he didn’t know anything about the working class population; he exploited it and [his supporters] were naive and unwilling to read or to know what was really going on. He played them, and to a certain extent the few people who are still in his corner, he still plays them. So it’s just kind of a bummer.

A lot of people have strong opinions about the liberal-minded cast returning to a show led by a Trump supporter.  I’m glad they do. She should hear it. And it’s better for her to hear it from the people that have supported her and watched her show than it is from me. I mean, we’re friends, we’re friendly, and I’ll continue to do the show. But it gets underneath your skin when 20 million people who used to watch your show are like, “What the fuck?”

She seems to know how people feel about her politics based on her appearance at the Golden Globes, when she said, “I’m kind of known for creating some great drama” while presenting with co-star John Goodman.   Of course she knows.

Well, I’m excited to have Nancy Bartlett back. You told me in 2013 that you didn’t think Nancy would have a place on the show if it ever returned.  It’s not that she didn’t have a place. But I didn’t think they’d be able to fit her story back in because of all the new characters and the family and reestablishing what’s been going on politically, so when they added the extra episode and wrote me in I was thrilled.

Nancy was one of the earliest portrayals of bisexuality on TV. What surprised you most about how her sexuality was treated on the show in the ’90s?  I mean, she was fun and it was a fun concept that she ran from being married to Tom Arnold into the relationship with Morgan Fairchild. It was sort of a lark at first, and of course it evolved. They wouldn’t let me kiss Morgan Fairchild under the mistletoe — we had to cut the kiss — so that’s how far we’ve come in terms of what you see sexually on TV.

But yeah, she was a funny, kooky, free-spirited character who got to do things and say things that was part of the evolution of sexuality on TV. It wasn’t intentional — it wasn’t like we were trying to do something groundbreaking. But that is how Roseanne is and was. She just did things that felt organic and authentic. She ended up having the actual kiss with Merle Hemingway [at a gay bar that Nancy took her to], but nonetheless, Nancy’s fun, and if they picked up the show again they’ll expand her story.

We’ll get more Nancy if there’s another season?  Oh yeah, absolutely. For sure, yeah.

Roseanne will have a genderfluid grandson, Mark — played by newcomer Ames McNamara — on the show as well.  Yes.

What are your thoughts on the show continuing to be inclusive?  I just think there has to be a little bit of everything in all the shows now, and I don’t know. I’ve gotta see the show before I can comment. He’s in my episode, but to the extent of what they’re trying to do with that character, we’ll have to see.

Speaking more generally, how do you feel about representation as far as LGBTQ people go on TV?  It’s certainly gotten a helluva lot better than when Nancy first came on the scene. And I think with each year that goes by, especially with the advent of Hulu and Netflix and Amazon, there’s been major breakthroughs.

Are you currently enjoying any shows with LGBTQ characters?  I watch 9-1-1 just because I think it’s a ridiculous show. Everywhere you turn there’s new, interesting gay characters. But I don’t go to a show for that. For me, my life has never been informed by that. I’ve always been comfortable with who I am sexually. I’ve been sexually fluid, I’ve broken all the ground rules since I was 17 years old. So, I’ve never had any need for somebody to be my role model. I’ve been my own role model. So, it’s a non-issue. But I think for the public at large it’s been a great time and a revolutionary time for people to see all kinds of characters — racially, sexually, women, men — come to life in a new way.

Have you heard of the very gay-centric Schitt’s Creek?  Honey, I was one of the first people to be hip to it!

Oh, snap.  I know, yes. But yeah, of course. Love it. Dan Levy is terrific — super funny and smart.

What can we expect from you in the future?  I’ve got three scripted projects I’m trying to get off the ground right now, so that’s a lot of my focus, and it’s a lot of hard work. So, I’m chipping away at that and, of course, continuing to go up for other roles as an actress and do my live performing.

What kind of scripts are you working on?  They’re all comedic. One is based on my early years in LA when I started off as a manicurist. One is a project with [performance artist] Justin Vivian Bond. We wrote a musical about six years ago called Arts & Crafts and we’re trying to get it into a TV series.

I remember you telling me you’d never stoop so low to do a reality show. Still out of the question?  Yeah, listen, if I haven’t done it by now, I’m certainly not gonna do it at this late date.

How do you feel about the way comedy has addressed the Trump era?  Everybody’s speaking about it and being funny and creative about it, and obviously people like Bill Maher and those types do it in a more political way. I think it’s been really interesting.

Has your recent comedy reflected current politics?  Sort of, kind of through the back door. I don’t hit people over the head talking about that stuff because so many people are good at doing it verbatim, so I try to keep it more global than just obvious.

Did you think Kathy Griffin went too far with the picture of her holding Trump’s decapitated head?   It’s not about going too far — it just wasn’t funny, and she’s not political. Why is she suddenly jumping on the bandwagon? That’s not what she does. And it wasn’t smart enough or interesting enough. That was its biggest crime.

But Kathy Griffin has been politically engaged and an activist for the gay community.  She’s an activist? I don’t know. I don’t think she’s an activist, frankly. I mean, that’s – she certainly takes advantage of the gay population in her way, but I don’t think she’s done anything earth-shattering for … I mean, I don’t agree.

Who would you consider an entertainer and an activist?  I mean, I’m an activist for being a human being. There’s bigger fish to fry, and my work is inherently political, and it’s been inherently LGBTQ-informed because it’s who I am; it’s what I’ve done from the beginning. I don’t call my audience “my gays.” My audience is my audience and everybody in it forms an alliance every night. You perform for the _entire_ crowd – it’s not about singling anyone out. And if your work is very, very daring and interesting, then smart people come to it, whether they’re gay, straight, black, white, men, women. I mean, you gotta be able to get underneath what’s really going on culturally, and then you’re always gonna have a smart audience sitting in front of you.

Who else in the comedy world can really dig into the cultural zeitgeist?  I don’t have a litany of people I’m sitting here thinking about. I’m sorry. It’s, like, too hard to do that. Right now the people who are impressing me the most are all these kids from the school in Florida. They’re activists. Went through a terrible trauma and they’ve been able to transform it into total activation, and that to me is really impressive and exciting. To talk about entertainers and people – it’s easy for all of us to do all that stuff because we’re not under duress, but when you’ve been practically possibly severely injured or murdered, yeah, that’s something to really applaud and stand by.

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It seemed as if the reboot of Roseanne was a risk that paid off. Ever since Will & Grace announced it was coming back to a “limited run” (only to be extended to two full seasons after high ratings), it has become standard for networks to tease a reboot of a show as “limited,” while holding out hope that ratings will be good enough to cement a full season order (it’s a way to bring back the stars without the humiliation of “canceling” the show if it flops). And after Roseanne debuted in March to huge ratings — nearly 22 million viewers — ABC quickly announced it would come back in the fall.

It was risky to do that so early, though, because Roseanne Barr herself is such a divisive figure — supportive of LGBT rights, a putative hero of the working class… but also an unapologetic Trump supporter. Why couldn’t there be a right wing star or a sitcom on network TV, though? In fact, Roseanne’s success emboldened Fox to reboot Last Man Standing, a middling sitcom ABC canceled last season because, some alleged, they didn’t like the politics of its Republican star, Tim Allen.

Well, now ABC really is canceling a show because of its star’s politics… at least in part.

Roseanne tweeted what many have called an overtly racist statement, wherein she equated former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to the Muslim Brotherhood and a monkey. (Jarrett is African American.)

“Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj,” Barr tweeted, with “vj” a reference to Jarrett. When some replied that the comment was racist, Barr shot back that Islam is not a “race.” (She apparently overlooked the “apes” comment.)

Wanda Sykes, who appears on the show, was the first to announce she could not return because of the comments. Co-star and executive producer Sara Gilbert (Darlene) also tweeted out her contempt for Barr. Gilbert is openly gay. Barr later apologized and and deleted the tweet, and announced she was leaking Twitter. But the damage was done. Last this hour, ABC denounced the statement, and said it was canceling Roseanne. It’s truncated season aired its finale last week.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

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‘Queer Eye’ food expert Antoni Porowski, on coconuts, fame and his celebrity banquet

Even though Antoni Porowski is known for his avocados, on a recent afternoon he was contemplating the coconut — every sultry detail of the tropical fruit meticulously combed like that of someone’s body during a first date. The fleshy inside, the milky liquid.

It’s the first day of June when the Polish-Canadian wine-and-dine expert on Netflix’s Queer Eye reboot (the second season of which we reviewed last week) rings and, oh right, we’re talking about food. But gay America isn’t hungry — it’s thirsty AF. And because real lives are being changed thanks to Porowski, designer Bobby Berk, culture advisor Karamo Brown, stylist Tan France and groomer Jonathan Van Ness, it is also joyfully crying.

Season 2 of Queer Eye doesn’t skimp on giving you opportunities to feel good about this otherwise not-good world, as the Fab Five imparts their best-life insight and general gay wisdom on a diverse group of clients, including the franchise’s first woman and transgender man.

As Porowski continues to process his experience with the sudden upswing in gay male thirst and avocado sex puns (one Facebook commenter claims he was so compelled by Porowski’s hotness, “I’m now cooking my own bloody guacamole”), the 34-year-old subject of culinary controversy talked critics and why variety truly is the spice of life.            

— Chris Azzopardi

Dallas Voice: After the new Betty Who theme-song video for the show, where you’re cradling avocados and wearing a crop top, the avocado dick puns are out in full force.

Antoni Porowski: I guess I asked for it, right? I’m literally wearing a crop top and unsuccessfully trying to juggle avocados, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

I must say, I do hope the crop top becomes a regular clothing theme of yours in the third season.

Thanks! I do have to give credit where it’s due, and that was 100 percent Tan France.

When it comes to you, the thirst is real. What is that kind of attention like from the gay community?

I do maintain a certain amount of ignorance to it and a kind of detachment. I learned quite early on, because there’s been a lot of really amazing and positive and nice attention from the show. But with that, there’s also gonna be certain haters and some negative and not-so-nice comments, so I’ve sort of decided that if I’m gonna take the good, I have to take the bad, so I’ve decided to take neither.

I take it all very lightly, with a small pinch of salt. It’s entertaining and it’s funny, but I just try to focus on what my next move is with this show, with press that we’re working on, living out of hotels for the past couple of months, and hoping that people really enjoy [this season] as much as they did the first.

When you’re living out of hotels, how do you maintain a healthy diet?

I don’t! That’s the honest truth of it. My only thing is, I always love to have a proper gym, because I get up fairly early, and when you’re jet-lagged, you don’t really know what day of the week it is or what city you’re in, which is often the case with me.

When we do go on press trips, and we discovered we were in London recently and Tan introduced me to the wonders of Nando’s, which is a chain that they don’t have here yet in the States, but it’s this awesome PERi-PERi chicken. Had that for, like, four meals in a row with a bunch of PERi-PERi mayo, guilt-free with chicken livers, ’cause, I mean, I wanna live my life too. I’m not one to deny myself of the pleasures of, like, a good ripe stinky cheese on a fresh crusty baked bread in Paris.

Oh, I’ve seen you indulge on the show.

It happens.

You’re not afraid of some macaroni salad.

There ya go! Well, but that wasn’t my recipe.

It wasn’t, but you still ate it.

Oh, I ate it. I’ll try anything twice.

Are you still trying to wrap your head around your overnight fame?

Yeah. I mean, it certainly hits in waves. The next level of kind of acceptance of what’s actually going on was when we were just recently in London, and when you experience people who’ve been waiting outside of your hotel with magazines to sign. It’s kind of like, “Wow, you’re a human with a life and a job, presumably, who wanted to wait to have a moment,” and I’m grateful for it, but it’s not something I want to be too comfortable with. It’s very bizarre and very overwhelming, and it’s a perpetual state of shock.

What my therapist tells me is, “Don’t trust your feelings right now because you’re constantly basically running on adrenaline — your life right now is pure adrenaline.” It’s been like overdrive, so it’s just, take everything very lightly, focus on the next move, make sure you always have a bottle of water in your hand and that you’re not drinking too much coffee, and that you rest whenever you can. And remember not to lean into your workaholic self, which is very alive and well in this new chapter of my life.

What are your gay fan interactions outside of hotels like?

I feel like I’m pretty good at reading people, but with fans it’s very different because the connection, like the energy and the direction of it, is very different. I always think, “Oh my gosh, I’m so uncomfortable after that interaction and I don’t know why.” Tan will tell me, “No, because they’re experiencing this concept of being starstruck, of seeing someone on TV, and then you meet them in person and you don’t really know how to behave.”

So my thing is, ask them a question about themselves, try to make this a human interaction, and try to normalize it in the best way that you can, just to make sure that the person kind of has a nice, meaningful experience and they can leave happy. Sometimes I’m left, like, taking care of people. They’ll come up and their mouth opens and they don’t say anything, and you don’t want to be presumptuous and be like, “Yeah! I’m the guy from that show!” But then once it becomes clear what show I’m on and the work that I do, it’s like, I have to kind of take care of them and be like, “Are you OK? It’s fine. Here, do you want a hug? Do you want a photo?”

You don’t just go right in for the hug?

No, I have more of a European sensibility. We like to kiss twice. Or… I don’t know, healthy boundaries.

Kiss twice, though? Everyone must just enjoy meeting you.

[Laughs]

How has helping other people on this show changed your approach to your own life?

I’ve had many passions: I studied psychology, that’s what my bachelor’s is in; I worked as a gallery director; I photographed vintage furniture; and on the acting side of things, that was something that was always very ego, where it was always how I want to be perceived. I wanted people to look and see and feel my presence, whereas with the show, it actually isn’t that at all. That became very clear with episode one: the energy is directed in the other direction, so it’s really us being of service to this person that we’re helping and figuring out how best we can benefit their lives in such a short amount of time and try to impact them in a meaningful way.

We see that happen in the first episode of Season 2, with Tammye.

Mama Tammye is an example who spun it on us, and doesn’t even taken care of herself and shows up as a teacher and as a member of her church, and for the five of us.

You cried at the end of that episode. Of you five, who cries the most?

You’re talking to him! When you hear somebody’s struggle, or especially when they’ve overcome something or made a choice like Tammye — there was a lot of pain and a lot of fear and borderline hateful feelings toward gays, and she realized that it was her perspective that was wrong, and she’s a beacon of hope for people. It’s possible at any age. If you have people like Tammye who were able to figure it out, there’s no excuse for the rest of us.

Even though you’ve been with men and women, you’ve said that you don’t like to call yourself bisexual. Have you found the best way to explain your sexual orientation to people yet?

Not really. And it’s not something that I feel too pressured to figure out. Sometimes I have very strong opinions about how to cook a filet of salmon so the skin remains crispy and doesn’t stick to the pan, but with a lot of things, I don’t like being the expert. I’d rather go in and be like, “I don’t know.” There’s a power in that for me. It’s sort of like going in with humility and saying, “I’m still trying to figure it out.”

While I don’t think I’m trying to figure out my sexuality, I’m just not as concerned with it anymore. My 20s were a really hard time for me of figuring out what the hell I wanted to do with my life. And being in my 30s, now that I kind of have a point and purpose with what I’m doing in this chapter of my life, it’s just, I’m happy where I’m at and that’s all that really matters.

Look, that [coming out] conversation with AJ in that changing room in Season 1, that was seriously a byproduct. Tan brought me along because we both had similar experiences. He as a Muslim and me just as the individual that I am. We’re both so completely different, but we have the same feelings about what it was like to come out, and that it’s this dynamic process, like [out actor] Charlie Carver recently — a fellow Gay Times alum — feels he’s constantly still coming out, that it’s this continued thing, that it doesn’t just happen once and you shoot your proverbial load and it’s done; you have to keep doing it over and over again. Some people don’t, but it’s not like a start, stop. And I don’t need that pressure in my life to try to find myself in any way where I feel like I’m locked into something. I’d just rather keep it open and fluid, because that’s how I am with the books that I read, the music that I listen to. All of my interests are always changing, and it’s a constant dynamic process, and so is my sexuality.

These days, there is obviously less pressure to subscribe to any one label, or stick to the binary.

For people who want to be not binary, go right ahead. If that helps you sleep better at night and you feel more like you’re a better and truer version of yourself, then 100 percent, you should be able to pursue that with freedom and … this is June … It has me thinking about Pride and what Pride means: the ability to be the truest version of yourself without any negative consequence or fear of being persecuted or judged or criticized or hurt for it. And whatever that is for a person, however you define yourself or don’t define yourself, you should be able to do that with total freedom. I know that’s utopian and idealistic, but that’s really something to strive for and something the show has reminded me of.

I read that you were a private chef for some high-profile clients. High profile as in celebrities?

So with food, it was something that kind of happened accidentally, cooking for people. There were some I’m not allowed to discuss, but in the sports world in New York there was somebody I was working for in particular where we would host these intimate dinner parties. And I remember as a kid when we would have dinner parties at my parents’ house, everyone would always gravitate toward the kitchen; that’s where the heart of the home is.

Where the smells originate.

Exactly. That’s where the slow-roasted garlic wafts are emanating from. And for me, I’m not a traditional classically trained chef where I’m in a kitchen and I’m doing my own thing; I am an entertainer, that’s who I am. And I love food and I love playing with it, and I love preparing it for people. It’s how I show my love. So, it sort of became this whole thing. We would make short ribs and I would just talk to people. She’s a close friend who works in the sports world and she was the one who kind of started this whole thing for me, kind of recommended me to other people in the biz, and then afterwards, I met [original Queer
Eye foodie and Chopped host] Ted Allen and worked as his personal assistant but also cooked for him and we did dinners, like Chopped barbecues, for some of his cast members and crew on his show. It sort of evolved in this weird, organic way while I had other jobs. It was sort of a side thing I did every now and then. It wasn’t a regularly occurring everyday thing where I showed up and made breakfast, lunch and dinner for someone. I was never one like that for any job. I’ve always had, like, 10 different things going on at the same time.

You’re on a desert island and you can survive off one food, what’s the food?

I love a fresh coconut. You crack it and you have the milk, which is so delicious, but the flesh too. There’s that creamy part on the inside that you can scoop with a spoon, and then there’s the really hard shell part that, if you roast it with sugar, it gets caramelized and really nice and crunchy. So, I think coconuts. I’d get fed up with them after a week, but I don’t know what food I wouldn’t get fed up about, truly. Ask me again tomorrow.

I’ve never thought about the flesh of a coconut until now, and it sounds weirdly sexy.

Oh, think about it. Go buy a fresh coconut and think of me.

If you could cook for any celebrity, who would it be and what would you cook?

Dead or alive? … I would take something off of the menu at Voltaire in Paris and I would prepare it for Oscar Wilde, and I would slap my copy of De
Profundis in front of him and be like, “We’re gonna talk about this for five hours and I’m gonna feed your belly and I’m gonna get you drunk, and you’re just gonna tell me everything and answer all of my questions.” And then I would also maybe throw Allen Ginsberg in there, and why not Jack Kerouac? And who else? I’d throw in Virginia Woolf and she’d tell me all about Orlando.

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Netflix’s second season of ‘Queer Eye

3 excellent shows hit the airwaves just in time for June Pride Month

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  |  Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

“I’m not ashamed — just scared,” says a closeted star college athlete when explaining, with distorted voice and in shadow, why he doesn’t feel empowered to come out and be an openly gay athlete. It’s an observation that resonates strongly, especially in light of how Michael Sam — the top defensive player in a tough college conference — was a last-second draft pick only after coming out. It is still almost unheard of for players in the five major American professional male team sports to be out (there have only been two — the NBA’s Jason Collins and MLS’ Robbie Rogers — and currently, there are none). That means few role models for younger gay athletes, and not a great history of tolerance in today’s environment.

DirecTV’s rewarding sports doc ‘Alone in the Game.’

Alone in the Game, which premieres on the Audience Network on DirecTV June 28 during Pride Month, interviews Rogers, and Collins, and others in the NFL, NCAA, NBA and media (including out ESPN commentator LZ Granderson) about the state of queerness in the universe of major league sports.

Some of the stories will be familiar to gay audiences who follow sports; others will be fresh even to hardcore armchair quarterbacks. But the feature length documentary does an excellent job of profiling the homophobia that still exists in the locker room and the boardrooms and back offices. You’ll be enraged and saddened, but also heartened by those unheralded heroes who make a difference for others at great personal cost.

I’m on record as saying the year’s most overrated movie was Love, Simon, which was effectively marketed as the first major-studio gay teen romantic comedy (even though it came from the indie arm of a studio, Fox 2000). “It was sweet!” people chimed like mynas taught to mimic talking points. Sweet, maybe, but not very good. Pretty bad, in fact, from plotting to character development to its middle-brow sensibilities, Love, Simon felt suspiciously like a 50-year-old gay man in 2018 making the film he wanted to see as an 18-year-old closeted teen in the 1980s. (Which is what it is.) We deserved better.

Daniel Doheny plays the goofy, wonderful Q kid in Netflix’s ‘Alex Strangelove,’

And we got better, albeit via Netflix which is, let’s face it, a more powerful entertainment entity today than the movie studios are. Alex Strangelove, newly out on the streaming service, is the film Love, Simon wanted to be and fans pretended it was. Alex Truelove (Daniel Doheny, who’s adorable) is the nerdy high school senior who also happens to be fairly popular with all the cliques. He’s had a hot girlfriend for months, but they haven’t gone “all the way” because, well, he wants his first time to be special. (It’s not her first time, but she finds his prudishness quaint.)

Then Alex meets another teen who is openly gay, flirty and genuinely nice. They become bros… but is there more to it than that? Even Alex isn’t sure, and it’s not because he’s in the closet. He is the Q in LGBTQ. And the audience can’t be certain, either.

“I think I’m bisexual,” Alex confides to his best friend, who is neither shocked nor bothered, but dismissed the suggestion out of hand anyway. “Do you listen to Panic! At the Disco while jerking off to pictures of vampires? … Then you’re not bisexual,” the friend advises.

It’s lines like that — and the overall tone set by writer-director Craig Johnson (The Skeleton Twins) — that makes Alex Strangelove such a charming winner. Yes, it still cleaves to many of the tropes of the teen sex comedy; that’s why we see rom-coms. But it doesn’t pander, it doesn’t create unreasonable conflicts and it plays out its emotions exactly the way real people would who are friends and supportive and also easily hurt. There are no artificial bad guys, unbelievable eleventh hour redemptions. Just a modern romance for millennials. Good for them.

Also on Netflix now is the (already) second season of the reboot of Queer Eye. The first season, which debuted just months ago, was a smash hit with its emotional power and discussion of serious issues — not just gay acceptance, but coming out, racism and romance. If you thought Season 2 would slide into routine, or miss the bar set by Season 1, well sister, think again. One of the great developments on the reboot is the dropping of For the Straight Guy part. This series of eight episodes kicks off with a straight woman diagnosed with cancer who leads a church, so the makeover is not just of the hair-and-makeup variety, but of perceptions of religion and faith and mortality. (It took me all of six minutes into the first ep to get goosebumps.) The Fab Five don’t shy from expressing their personal conflicts with organized religion; they aren’t being the mainstream “aren’t-we-adorbs-as-we-zhuzh?” gays of the original series. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) The guys also invade small towns in Georgia, not the cosmopolitan centers of the Atlantic Corridor or Midwestern metropolises. The show is truly about winning hearts and minds… but also being wholly yourself.

I haven’t watched every episode of this season of Queer Eye yet; that would feel like a disservice to how it has been designed to be savored. No need to rush through such heartfelt emotions.               

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Iconic actor and activist Sean Hayes, on changing TV — and the culture — as Jack on ‘Will & Grace’

Where would our queer world be without Will & Grace? That’s where my head was just before Sean Hayes phoned, recalling my lonely teen years, when gay white men on TV alone — here’s to evolved representation! — was unprecedented and life-changing for people like 15-year-old, closeted me.

It’s not enough to say Hayes portrays Jack McFarland on the NBC sitcom, then, because some roles become legend, upstaging even the actor giving him life. Jack is one such character. And so a call from Hayes is like being a kid and spotting your fifth grade teacher at the grocery store: It doesn’t quite feel real, and yet Hayes is a real man with a real life and even a real husband, music producer Scott Icenogle. But to the late-’90s TV landscape, it was the actor’s half-fiction as Jack and his exploding-rainbow persona that cut through heteronormative programming with gay jokes even your grandma could get down with.

And then, there’s Karen. You obviously don’t need me to ramble on about Jack’s best socialite friend (played by Megan Mullally), who never met a martini she didn’t like. You know her, you love her. And together they truly make all of our friends out to be absolute fucking bores. The sitcom’s recent revival reinstated #friendshipgoals when the snarky pals, along with titular housemates Will (Eric McCormack) and Grace (Debra Messing), came swishing back last September for a ninth season after ending its initial 1998-2006 run.

Hayes isn’t Jack, exactly, but you could be fooled if he called you, too, his usually-unflashy voice sometimes picking up wind and taking on the kind of rapid-fire cadence his famous Cher-worshiping alter ego is known for. With season 10 premiering Oct. 4, and nine now available on DVD and digital, we caught up with Hayes, 47, to talk about those who’ve long criticized Jack for being “stereotypically” gay, the history of the legendary Karen-Jack slap fights, and who helped him be OK with being gay.

— Chris Azzopardi

Dallas Voice: It’s hard to put into words exactly what it feels like to talk to the man who gave me such an iconic gay character when I needed it most. Sean Hayes: Oh my god. That’s so sweet. I really appreciate that. And you just answered the reason why when people ask me what’s the best part about playing it — that’s the best part.
Is it? One hundred percent.

When did you first know that Will & Grace had impacted the LGBTQ community the way it has? Just a couple of weeks ago! [Laughs] No, I’m joking. You know what’s so funny — first of all, you have no idea how much that means to me. You saying how much I mean to you, it means equally as much to me, so thank you.

So when did I know I had an impact? I think when I was young and doing the show I was so wrapped up in myself, in acting, in getting the part: “Am I going to get fired? Am I gonna learn my lines?” I was just happy to have a job.

It’s such a fascinating thing to discuss, and I’m so glad you asked: I felt normal growing up, so when I got a job, playing a gay character on a television sitcom I just thought, “Oh, I just have to be me, kind of, a heightened version of myself.” I didn’t think it would have that much of an impact because of the bubble I grew up in. I surround myself with people who are accepting of me, so naively I was like, “The rest of the world must be OK with it.” I mean, I knew the stories out there. I grew up and knew it wasn’t accepted, but I just didn’t think on any big level it was any big deal, so that gave me the confidence to play him as outrageously as I could because, again, I’m surrounded by writers and actors — everybody else — who embrace this, so I felt loved, I felt supported and I felt confidence. So, I wasn’t going to work thinking about how this is going to affect anybody.

It was a wonderful byproduct later, and I was like, “Oh, ohh!” And once it started and all the press and blah blah blah, and we never got any backlash for being political in that sense, meaning how they politicized gay people, which is wrong. That’s another interview.

Over the years, people have criticized Jack for being “flamboyant.” How aware were you of that concern when the show returned for its revival season? Oh, I never heard that. This is the first time hearing it. So you’re saying people were worried, but I was playing him — I call it outrageous because “flamboyant” means a certain type of gay person, I think, and that’s another conversation to have. I was playing him as outrageously as I was before. So people were concerned that I was playing him a certain way?

People wondered if Jack was too stereotypical for TV in 2018 and expressed some concern over what the straight community might think of us. I think that’s insider homophobia. Because I know people like Jack, because one part of me is like Jack, and so if you’re saying people in the gay community were concerned that I was playing Jack a certain way and people would “worry” that gay people act like that, they do act like that. And there’s people who act like Will. There are people on all spectrums of human behavior in the gay community, just like there are people on all spectrums of human behavior in the straight community, so I nix that and I say “bye” to that — I say, “bye, Felicia!” — because that doesn’t make any sense to me.

Similarly, Cam of Modern Family was criticized for being an over-the-top and exaggerated version of what a gay person is, and I’m like, what exactly is a gay person supposed to be in 1998 or 2018? Yeah, exactly. What are they supposed to be? And by the way, they are exaggerated, some of them. And so are straight people. Look at Jim Carrey, look at Robin Williams. There are lots of straight people who are exaggerated as well. I hate that argument — no, I’m glad you brought it up. I’m just saying I love talking about it, because it’s ridiculous.

As a kid coming to terms with being gay, who was your person? If you’re talking about a famous person, Andy Bell [of Erasure]. Because I was in college and I was 17, 18, and I was shocked that somebody was out and proud, making a living in the arts or in pop culture by being who they are and not apologizing for it. I thought that was mind-blowing because “A Little Respect” was the No. 1 song on the radio and I was like, “Wait, the guy is gay and everybody is OK with that?” The truth is not a lot of people knew because we didn’t have the internet, but I knew and all my gay friends knew. And I was like, “That’s amazing.” So that was inspiring to me, that you could be gay and make a living by singing, acting, whatever. But as far as actors go, Marty Short and Steve Martin were my inspirations in comedy, and Marty’s a good friend now and I love him. He is the funniest person, I think, in the business.

What has it been like to be a part of a show that has existed during two very different times, culturally and politically, for the LGBTQ community? First of all, I feel very fortunate and lucky to be part of the chorus of the movement. I may not be a single voice, but I’m enjoying being a part of the chorus. And I think that we’re lucky to have the voice and the representation for people to talk about it again, because I don’t think it should ever stop being talked about because everything is not OK. There are still gay kids being bullied. And look at that [gay] couple [who was assaulted] in Florida in the bathroom during Pride. It just doesn’t end. The hate doesn’t end overnight.

So we have to keep doing things, and again, my contribution may not be as an activist, because I just don’t feel comfortable doing that, it’s just not who I am. It’s not in my blood, it’s not in my DNA to stand at a podium and speak in sound bites about how we need to prevail over the government and the system. I leave that to people who are good at it — I’m not good at it. What I’m good at is being comfortable in my own skin and showing people that I have a husband and we make stupid Facebook videos and try to show people that we’re as normal as any other human, so I try to do my best at that. So I’m happy the show is back because there’s still tons of work to do. The power of comedy is so incredible; that’s why we broke so many boundaries the first time. And hopefully we can continue to do that.

Megan Mullally has said that you’re her “second husband,” after her real husband, Nick Offerman. How does your chemistry with Megan after all these years compare to the first time that you stepped onto set and shot the pilot? It’s so funny that she calls me her second husband because Nick and I were born on the exact same day, same year, about 30 miles apart from each other. Isn’t that hilarious? But it’s like working with your sister. There’s a shorthand that nobody else would understand, so it’s like, “I’m gonna do this,” and she’s like, “I’m gonna do that,” and then we just do it together and there it is. So, we now know how to cut through all the stuff that you need to in order to get to a comedic moment in a scene, and that’s what’s great about all this time that’s passed. I understand her, she understands me, we understand each other, so the chemistry has only gotten hotter.

Tell me the history of the slap fights between Karen and Jack. There’s an episode called “Coffee and Commitment” where Jack is trying to get off of coffee and Karen’s trying to quit alcohol, so that episode was the first time we slapped each other. It just, on paper, was “Karen slaps Jack, Jack slaps Karen,” but of course Jimmy Burrows, who is incredible at physical comedy and directing, of course, said, “Let’s make a dance out of this.” So, we rehearsed the rhythm of it, because I think that’s what makes you laugh — that’s what makes me laugh: the pauses and then the slapping again and then the pause and the slap-slap. It’s music, so you have to rehearse the beats and the rhythms in order to get that. It makes me laugh even thinking about it.

What do you envision for Jack’s future? Well, I don’t want him to change too much because our friends are our friends from high school because they never change, right? Maybe get married, but still remain Jack somehow, or find a long-term relationship. Or maybe — maybe! — there’s someone close in his own life that might be a suitable partner for life. Who knows.

Will? I have no idea.

Could you see them together? Could I see Will and Jack together? Maybe!

You’ve said you want to see him with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Just so you know, I’m here for it. I think that would be a hilarious episode, and I hope Dwayne comes to his senses and comes to the Will & Grace stage to play and have a good time.

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It seemed as if the reboot of Roseanne was a risk that paid off. Ever since Will & Grace announced it was coming back to a “limited run” (only to be extended to two full seasons after high ratings), it has become standard for networks to tease a reboot of a show as “limited,” while holding out hope that ratings will be good enough to cement a full season order (it’s a way to bring back the stars without the humiliation of “canceling” the show if it flops). And after Roseanne debuted in March to huge ratings — nearly 22 million viewers — ABC quickly announced it would come back in the fall.

It was risky to do that so early, though, because Roseanne Barr herself is such a divisive figure — supportive of LGBT rights, a putative hero of the working class… but also an unapologetic Trump supporter. Why couldn’t there be a right wing star or a sitcom on network TV, though? In fact, Roseanne’s success emboldened Fox to reboot Last Man Standing, a middling sitcom ABC canceled last season because, some alleged, they didn’t like the politics of its Republican star, Tim Allen.

Well, now ABC really is canceling a show because of its star’s politics… at least in part.

Roseanne tweeted what many have called an overtly racist statement, wherein she equated former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to the Muslim Brotherhood and a monkey. (Jarrett is African American.)

“Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj,” Barr tweeted, with “vj” a reference to Jarrett. When some replied that the comment was racist, Barr shot back that Islam is not a “race.” (She apparently overlooked the “apes” comment.)

Wanda Sykes, who appears on the show, was the first to announce she could not return because of the comments. Co-star and executive producer Sara Gilbert (Darlene) also tweeted out her contempt for Barr. Gilbert is openly gay. Barr later apologized and and deleted the tweet, and announced she was leaking Twitter. But the damage was done. Last this hour, ABC denounced the statement, and said it was canceling Roseanne. It’s truncated season aired its finale last week.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

The post ABC cancels hit ‘Roseanne’ reboot suddenly, following racist tweets from Barr appeared first on Dallas Voice.

‘Queer Eye’ food expert Antoni Porowski, on coconuts, fame and his celebrity banquet

Even though Antoni Porowski is known for his avocados, on a recent afternoon he was contemplating the coconut — every sultry detail of the tropical fruit meticulously combed like that of someone’s body during a first date. The fleshy inside, the milky liquid.

It’s the first day of June when the Polish-Canadian wine-and-dine expert on Netflix’s Queer Eye reboot (the second season of which we reviewed last week) rings and, oh right, we’re talking about food. But gay America isn’t hungry — it’s thirsty AF. And because real lives are being changed thanks to Porowski, designer Bobby Berk, culture advisor Karamo Brown, stylist Tan France and groomer Jonathan Van Ness, it is also joyfully crying.

Season 2 of Queer Eye doesn’t skimp on giving you opportunities to feel good about this otherwise not-good world, as the Fab Five imparts their best-life insight and general gay wisdom on a diverse group of clients, including the franchise’s first woman and transgender man.

As Porowski continues to process his experience with the sudden upswing in gay male thirst and avocado sex puns (one Facebook commenter claims he was so compelled by Porowski’s hotness, “I’m now cooking my own bloody guacamole”), the 34-year-old subject of culinary controversy talked critics and why variety truly is the spice of life.            

— Chris Azzopardi

Dallas Voice: After the new Betty Who theme-song video for the show, where you’re cradling avocados and wearing a crop top, the avocado dick puns are out in full force.

Antoni Porowski: I guess I asked for it, right? I’m literally wearing a crop top and unsuccessfully trying to juggle avocados, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

I must say, I do hope the crop top becomes a regular clothing theme of yours in the third season.

Thanks! I do have to give credit where it’s due, and that was 100 percent Tan France.

When it comes to you, the thirst is real. What is that kind of attention like from the gay community?

I do maintain a certain amount of ignorance to it and a kind of detachment. I learned quite early on, because there’s been a lot of really amazing and positive and nice attention from the show. But with that, there’s also gonna be certain haters and some negative and not-so-nice comments, so I’ve sort of decided that if I’m gonna take the good, I have to take the bad, so I’ve decided to take neither.

I take it all very lightly, with a small pinch of salt. It’s entertaining and it’s funny, but I just try to focus on what my next move is with this show, with press that we’re working on, living out of hotels for the past couple of months, and hoping that people really enjoy [this season] as much as they did the first.

When you’re living out of hotels, how do you maintain a healthy diet?

I don’t! That’s the honest truth of it. My only thing is, I always love to have a proper gym, because I get up fairly early, and when you’re jet-lagged, you don’t really know what day of the week it is or what city you’re in, which is often the case with me.

When we do go on press trips, and we discovered we were in London recently and Tan introduced me to the wonders of Nando’s, which is a chain that they don’t have here yet in the States, but it’s this awesome PERi-PERi chicken. Had that for, like, four meals in a row with a bunch of PERi-PERi mayo, guilt-free with chicken livers, ’cause, I mean, I wanna live my life too. I’m not one to deny myself of the pleasures of, like, a good ripe stinky cheese on a fresh crusty baked bread in Paris.

Oh, I’ve seen you indulge on the show.

It happens.

You’re not afraid of some macaroni salad.

There ya go! Well, but that wasn’t my recipe.

It wasn’t, but you still ate it.

Oh, I ate it. I’ll try anything twice.

Are you still trying to wrap your head around your overnight fame?

Yeah. I mean, it certainly hits in waves. The next level of kind of acceptance of what’s actually going on was when we were just recently in London, and when you experience people who’ve been waiting outside of your hotel with magazines to sign. It’s kind of like, “Wow, you’re a human with a life and a job, presumably, who wanted to wait to have a moment,” and I’m grateful for it, but it’s not something I want to be too comfortable with. It’s very bizarre and very overwhelming, and it’s a perpetual state of shock.

What my therapist tells me is, “Don’t trust your feelings right now because you’re constantly basically running on adrenaline — your life right now is pure adrenaline.” It’s been like overdrive, so it’s just, take everything very lightly, focus on the next move, make sure you always have a bottle of water in your hand and that you’re not drinking too much coffee, and that you rest whenever you can. And remember not to lean into your workaholic self, which is very alive and well in this new chapter of my life.

What are your gay fan interactions outside of hotels like?

I feel like I’m pretty good at reading people, but with fans it’s very different because the connection, like the energy and the direction of it, is very different. I always think, “Oh my gosh, I’m so uncomfortable after that interaction and I don’t know why.” Tan will tell me, “No, because they’re experiencing this concept of being starstruck, of seeing someone on TV, and then you meet them in person and you don’t really know how to behave.”

So my thing is, ask them a question about themselves, try to make this a human interaction, and try to normalize it in the best way that you can, just to make sure that the person kind of has a nice, meaningful experience and they can leave happy. Sometimes I’m left, like, taking care of people. They’ll come up and their mouth opens and they don’t say anything, and you don’t want to be presumptuous and be like, “Yeah! I’m the guy from that show!” But then once it becomes clear what show I’m on and the work that I do, it’s like, I have to kind of take care of them and be like, “Are you OK? It’s fine. Here, do you want a hug? Do you want a photo?”

You don’t just go right in for the hug?

No, I have more of a European sensibility. We like to kiss twice. Or… I don’t know, healthy boundaries.

Kiss twice, though? Everyone must just enjoy meeting you.

[Laughs]

How has helping other people on this show changed your approach to your own life?

I’ve had many passions: I studied psychology, that’s what my bachelor’s is in; I worked as a gallery director; I photographed vintage furniture; and on the acting side of things, that was something that was always very ego, where it was always how I want to be perceived. I wanted people to look and see and feel my presence, whereas with the show, it actually isn’t that at all. That became very clear with episode one: the energy is directed in the other direction, so it’s really us being of service to this person that we’re helping and figuring out how best we can benefit their lives in such a short amount of time and try to impact them in a meaningful way.

We see that happen in the first episode of Season 2, with Tammye.

Mama Tammye is an example who spun it on us, and doesn’t even taken care of herself and shows up as a teacher and as a member of her church, and for the five of us.

You cried at the end of that episode. Of you five, who cries the most?

You’re talking to him! When you hear somebody’s struggle, or especially when they’ve overcome something or made a choice like Tammye — there was a lot of pain and a lot of fear and borderline hateful feelings toward gays, and she realized that it was her perspective that was wrong, and she’s a beacon of hope for people. It’s possible at any age. If you have people like Tammye who were able to figure it out, there’s no excuse for the rest of us.

Even though you’ve been with men and women, you’ve said that you don’t like to call yourself bisexual. Have you found the best way to explain your sexual orientation to people yet?

Not really. And it’s not something that I feel too pressured to figure out. Sometimes I have very strong opinions about how to cook a filet of salmon so the skin remains crispy and doesn’t stick to the pan, but with a lot of things, I don’t like being the expert. I’d rather go in and be like, “I don’t know.” There’s a power in that for me. It’s sort of like going in with humility and saying, “I’m still trying to figure it out.”

While I don’t think I’m trying to figure out my sexuality, I’m just not as concerned with it anymore. My 20s were a really hard time for me of figuring out what the hell I wanted to do with my life. And being in my 30s, now that I kind of have a point and purpose with what I’m doing in this chapter of my life, it’s just, I’m happy where I’m at and that’s all that really matters.

Look, that [coming out] conversation with AJ in that changing room in Season 1, that was seriously a byproduct. Tan brought me along because we both had similar experiences. He as a Muslim and me just as the individual that I am. We’re both so completely different, but we have the same feelings about what it was like to come out, and that it’s this dynamic process, like [out actor] Charlie Carver recently — a fellow Gay Times alum — feels he’s constantly still coming out, that it’s this continued thing, that it doesn’t just happen once and you shoot your proverbial load and it’s done; you have to keep doing it over and over again. Some people don’t, but it’s not like a start, stop. And I don’t need that pressure in my life to try to find myself in any way where I feel like I’m locked into something. I’d just rather keep it open and fluid, because that’s how I am with the books that I read, the music that I listen to. All of my interests are always changing, and it’s a constant dynamic process, and so is my sexuality.

These days, there is obviously less pressure to subscribe to any one label, or stick to the binary.

For people who want to be not binary, go right ahead. If that helps you sleep better at night and you feel more like you’re a better and truer version of yourself, then 100 percent, you should be able to pursue that with freedom and … this is June … It has me thinking about Pride and what Pride means: the ability to be the truest version of yourself without any negative consequence or fear of being persecuted or judged or criticized or hurt for it. And whatever that is for a person, however you define yourself or don’t define yourself, you should be able to do that with total freedom. I know that’s utopian and idealistic, but that’s really something to strive for and something the show has reminded me of.

I read that you were a private chef for some high-profile clients. High profile as in celebrities?

So with food, it was something that kind of happened accidentally, cooking for people. There were some I’m not allowed to discuss, but in the sports world in New York there was somebody I was working for in particular where we would host these intimate dinner parties. And I remember as a kid when we would have dinner parties at my parents’ house, everyone would always gravitate toward the kitchen; that’s where the heart of the home is.

Where the smells originate.

Exactly. That’s where the slow-roasted garlic wafts are emanating from. And for me, I’m not a traditional classically trained chef where I’m in a kitchen and I’m doing my own thing; I am an entertainer, that’s who I am. And I love food and I love playing with it, and I love preparing it for people. It’s how I show my love. So, it sort of became this whole thing. We would make short ribs and I would just talk to people. She’s a close friend who works in the sports world and she was the one who kind of started this whole thing for me, kind of recommended me to other people in the biz, and then afterwards, I met [original Queer
Eye foodie and Chopped host] Ted Allen and worked as his personal assistant but also cooked for him and we did dinners, like Chopped barbecues, for some of his cast members and crew on his show. It sort of evolved in this weird, organic way while I had other jobs. It was sort of a side thing I did every now and then. It wasn’t a regularly occurring everyday thing where I showed up and made breakfast, lunch and dinner for someone. I was never one like that for any job. I’ve always had, like, 10 different things going on at the same time.

You’re on a desert island and you can survive off one food, what’s the food?

I love a fresh coconut. You crack it and you have the milk, which is so delicious, but the flesh too. There’s that creamy part on the inside that you can scoop with a spoon, and then there’s the really hard shell part that, if you roast it with sugar, it gets caramelized and really nice and crunchy. So, I think coconuts. I’d get fed up with them after a week, but I don’t know what food I wouldn’t get fed up about, truly. Ask me again tomorrow.

I’ve never thought about the flesh of a coconut until now, and it sounds weirdly sexy.

Oh, think about it. Go buy a fresh coconut and think of me.

If you could cook for any celebrity, who would it be and what would you cook?

Dead or alive? … I would take something off of the menu at Voltaire in Paris and I would prepare it for Oscar Wilde, and I would slap my copy of De
Profundis in front of him and be like, “We’re gonna talk about this for five hours and I’m gonna feed your belly and I’m gonna get you drunk, and you’re just gonna tell me everything and answer all of my questions.” And then I would also maybe throw Allen Ginsberg in there, and why not Jack Kerouac? And who else? I’d throw in Virginia Woolf and she’d tell me all about Orlando.

The post Taste maker appeared first on Dallas Voice.

Netflix’s second season of ‘Queer Eye

3 excellent shows hit the airwaves just in time for June Pride Month

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  |  Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

“I’m not ashamed — just scared,” says a closeted star college athlete when explaining, with distorted voice and in shadow, why he doesn’t feel empowered to come out and be an openly gay athlete. It’s an observation that resonates strongly, especially in light of how Michael Sam — the top defensive player in a tough college conference — was a last-second draft pick only after coming out. It is still almost unheard of for players in the five major American professional male team sports to be out (there have only been two — the NBA’s Jason Collins and MLS’ Robbie Rogers — and currently, there are none). That means few role models for younger gay athletes, and not a great history of tolerance in today’s environment.

DirecTV’s rewarding sports doc ‘Alone in the Game.’

Alone in the Game, which premieres on the Audience Network on DirecTV June 28 during Pride Month, interviews Rogers, and Collins, and others in the NFL, NCAA, NBA and media (including out ESPN commentator LZ Granderson) about the state of queerness in the universe of major league sports.

Some of the stories will be familiar to gay audiences who follow sports; others will be fresh even to hardcore armchair quarterbacks. But the feature length documentary does an excellent job of profiling the homophobia that still exists in the locker room and the boardrooms and back offices. You’ll be enraged and saddened, but also heartened by those unheralded heroes who make a difference for others at great personal cost.

I’m on record as saying the year’s most overrated movie was Love, Simon, which was effectively marketed as the first major-studio gay teen romantic comedy (even though it came from the indie arm of a studio, Fox 2000). “It was sweet!” people chimed like mynas taught to mimic talking points. Sweet, maybe, but not very good. Pretty bad, in fact, from plotting to character development to its middle-brow sensibilities, Love, Simon felt suspiciously like a 50-year-old gay man in 2018 making the film he wanted to see as an 18-year-old closeted teen in the 1980s. (Which is what it is.) We deserved better.

Daniel Doheny plays the goofy, wonderful Q kid in Netflix’s ‘Alex Strangelove,’

And we got better, albeit via Netflix which is, let’s face it, a more powerful entertainment entity today than the movie studios are. Alex Strangelove, newly out on the streaming service, is the film Love, Simon wanted to be and fans pretended it was. Alex Truelove (Daniel Doheny, who’s adorable) is the nerdy high school senior who also happens to be fairly popular with all the cliques. He’s had a hot girlfriend for months, but they haven’t gone “all the way” because, well, he wants his first time to be special. (It’s not her first time, but she finds his prudishness quaint.)

Then Alex meets another teen who is openly gay, flirty and genuinely nice. They become bros… but is there more to it than that? Even Alex isn’t sure, and it’s not because he’s in the closet. He is the Q in LGBTQ. And the audience can’t be certain, either.

“I think I’m bisexual,” Alex confides to his best friend, who is neither shocked nor bothered, but dismissed the suggestion out of hand anyway. “Do you listen to Panic! At the Disco while jerking off to pictures of vampires? … Then you’re not bisexual,” the friend advises.

It’s lines like that — and the overall tone set by writer-director Craig Johnson (The Skeleton Twins) — that makes Alex Strangelove such a charming winner. Yes, it still cleaves to many of the tropes of the teen sex comedy; that’s why we see rom-coms. But it doesn’t pander, it doesn’t create unreasonable conflicts and it plays out its emotions exactly the way real people would who are friends and supportive and also easily hurt. There are no artificial bad guys, unbelievable eleventh hour redemptions. Just a modern romance for millennials. Good for them.

Also on Netflix now is the (already) second season of the reboot of Queer Eye. The first season, which debuted just months ago, was a smash hit with its emotional power and discussion of serious issues — not just gay acceptance, but coming out, racism and romance. If you thought Season 2 would slide into routine, or miss the bar set by Season 1, well sister, think again. One of the great developments on the reboot is the dropping of For the Straight Guy part. This series of eight episodes kicks off with a straight woman diagnosed with cancer who leads a church, so the makeover is not just of the hair-and-makeup variety, but of perceptions of religion and faith and mortality. (It took me all of six minutes into the first ep to get goosebumps.) The Fab Five don’t shy from expressing their personal conflicts with organized religion; they aren’t being the mainstream “aren’t-we-adorbs-as-we-zhuzh?” gays of the original series. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) The guys also invade small towns in Georgia, not the cosmopolitan centers of the Atlantic Corridor or Midwestern metropolises. The show is truly about winning hearts and minds… but also being wholly yourself.

I haven’t watched every episode of this season of Queer Eye yet; that would feel like a disservice to how it has been designed to be savored. No need to rush through such heartfelt emotions.               

The post PrideTV appeared first on Dallas Voice.

Iconic actor and activist Sean Hayes, on changing TV — and the culture — as Jack on ‘Will & Grace’

Where would our queer world be without Will & Grace? That’s where my head was just before Sean Hayes phoned, recalling my lonely teen years, when gay white men on TV alone — here’s to evolved representation! — was unprecedented and life-changing for people like 15-year-old, closeted me.

It’s not enough to say Hayes portrays Jack McFarland on the NBC sitcom, then, because some roles become legend, upstaging even the actor giving him life. Jack is one such character. And so a call from Hayes is like being a kid and spotting your fifth grade teacher at the grocery store: It doesn’t quite feel real, and yet Hayes is a real man with a real life and even a real husband, music producer Scott Icenogle. But to the late-’90s TV landscape, it was the actor’s half-fiction as Jack and his exploding-rainbow persona that cut through heteronormative programming with gay jokes even your grandma could get down with.

And then, there’s Karen. You obviously don’t need me to ramble on about Jack’s best socialite friend (played by Megan Mullally), who never met a martini she didn’t like. You know her, you love her. And together they truly make all of our friends out to be absolute fucking bores. The sitcom’s recent revival reinstated #friendshipgoals when the snarky pals, along with titular housemates Will (Eric McCormack) and Grace (Debra Messing), came swishing back last September for a ninth season after ending its initial 1998-2006 run.

Hayes isn’t Jack, exactly, but you could be fooled if he called you, too, his usually-unflashy voice sometimes picking up wind and taking on the kind of rapid-fire cadence his famous Cher-worshiping alter ego is known for. With season 10 premiering Oct. 4, and nine now available on DVD and digital, we caught up with Hayes, 47, to talk about those who’ve long criticized Jack for being “stereotypically” gay, the history of the legendary Karen-Jack slap fights, and who helped him be OK with being gay.

— Chris Azzopardi

Dallas Voice: It’s hard to put into words exactly what it feels like to talk to the man who gave me such an iconic gay character when I needed it most. Sean Hayes: Oh my god. That’s so sweet. I really appreciate that. And you just answered the reason why when people ask me what’s the best part about playing it — that’s the best part.
Is it? One hundred percent.

When did you first know that Will & Grace had impacted the LGBTQ community the way it has? Just a couple of weeks ago! [Laughs] No, I’m joking. You know what’s so funny — first of all, you have no idea how much that means to me. You saying how much I mean to you, it means equally as much to me, so thank you.

So when did I know I had an impact? I think when I was young and doing the show I was so wrapped up in myself, in acting, in getting the part: “Am I going to get fired? Am I gonna learn my lines?” I was just happy to have a job.

It’s such a fascinating thing to discuss, and I’m so glad you asked: I felt normal growing up, so when I got a job, playing a gay character on a television sitcom I just thought, “Oh, I just have to be me, kind of, a heightened version of myself.” I didn’t think it would have that much of an impact because of the bubble I grew up in. I surround myself with people who are accepting of me, so naively I was like, “The rest of the world must be OK with it.” I mean, I knew the stories out there. I grew up and knew it wasn’t accepted, but I just didn’t think on any big level it was any big deal, so that gave me the confidence to play him as outrageously as I could because, again, I’m surrounded by writers and actors — everybody else — who embrace this, so I felt loved, I felt supported and I felt confidence. So, I wasn’t going to work thinking about how this is going to affect anybody.

It was a wonderful byproduct later, and I was like, “Oh, ohh!” And once it started and all the press and blah blah blah, and we never got any backlash for being political in that sense, meaning how they politicized gay people, which is wrong. That’s another interview.

Over the years, people have criticized Jack for being “flamboyant.” How aware were you of that concern when the show returned for its revival season? Oh, I never heard that. This is the first time hearing it. So you’re saying people were worried, but I was playing him — I call it outrageous because “flamboyant” means a certain type of gay person, I think, and that’s another conversation to have. I was playing him as outrageously as I was before. So people were concerned that I was playing him a certain way?

People wondered if Jack was too stereotypical for TV in 2018 and expressed some concern over what the straight community might think of us. I think that’s insider homophobia. Because I know people like Jack, because one part of me is like Jack, and so if you’re saying people in the gay community were concerned that I was playing Jack a certain way and people would “worry” that gay people act like that, they do act like that. And there’s people who act like Will. There are people on all spectrums of human behavior in the gay community, just like there are people on all spectrums of human behavior in the straight community, so I nix that and I say “bye” to that — I say, “bye, Felicia!” — because that doesn’t make any sense to me.

Similarly, Cam of Modern Family was criticized for being an over-the-top and exaggerated version of what a gay person is, and I’m like, what exactly is a gay person supposed to be in 1998 or 2018? Yeah, exactly. What are they supposed to be? And by the way, they are exaggerated, some of them. And so are straight people. Look at Jim Carrey, look at Robin Williams. There are lots of straight people who are exaggerated as well. I hate that argument — no, I’m glad you brought it up. I’m just saying I love talking about it, because it’s ridiculous.

As a kid coming to terms with being gay, who was your person? If you’re talking about a famous person, Andy Bell [of Erasure]. Because I was in college and I was 17, 18, and I was shocked that somebody was out and proud, making a living in the arts or in pop culture by being who they are and not apologizing for it. I thought that was mind-blowing because “A Little Respect” was the No. 1 song on the radio and I was like, “Wait, the guy is gay and everybody is OK with that?” The truth is not a lot of people knew because we didn’t have the internet, but I knew and all my gay friends knew. And I was like, “That’s amazing.” So that was inspiring to me, that you could be gay and make a living by singing, acting, whatever. But as far as actors go, Marty Short and Steve Martin were my inspirations in comedy, and Marty’s a good friend now and I love him. He is the funniest person, I think, in the business.

What has it been like to be a part of a show that has existed during two very different times, culturally and politically, for the LGBTQ community? First of all, I feel very fortunate and lucky to be part of the chorus of the movement. I may not be a single voice, but I’m enjoying being a part of the chorus. And I think that we’re lucky to have the voice and the representation for people to talk about it again, because I don’t think it should ever stop being talked about because everything is not OK. There are still gay kids being bullied. And look at that [gay] couple [who was assaulted] in Florida in the bathroom during Pride. It just doesn’t end. The hate doesn’t end overnight.

So we have to keep doing things, and again, my contribution may not be as an activist, because I just don’t feel comfortable doing that, it’s just not who I am. It’s not in my blood, it’s not in my DNA to stand at a podium and speak in sound bites about how we need to prevail over the government and the system. I leave that to people who are good at it — I’m not good at it. What I’m good at is being comfortable in my own skin and showing people that I have a husband and we make stupid Facebook videos and try to show people that we’re as normal as any other human, so I try to do my best at that. So I’m happy the show is back because there’s still tons of work to do. The power of comedy is so incredible; that’s why we broke so many boundaries the first time. And hopefully we can continue to do that.

Megan Mullally has said that you’re her “second husband,” after her real husband, Nick Offerman. How does your chemistry with Megan after all these years compare to the first time that you stepped onto set and shot the pilot? It’s so funny that she calls me her second husband because Nick and I were born on the exact same day, same year, about 30 miles apart from each other. Isn’t that hilarious? But it’s like working with your sister. There’s a shorthand that nobody else would understand, so it’s like, “I’m gonna do this,” and she’s like, “I’m gonna do that,” and then we just do it together and there it is. So, we now know how to cut through all the stuff that you need to in order to get to a comedic moment in a scene, and that’s what’s great about all this time that’s passed. I understand her, she understands me, we understand each other, so the chemistry has only gotten hotter.

Tell me the history of the slap fights between Karen and Jack. There’s an episode called “Coffee and Commitment” where Jack is trying to get off of coffee and Karen’s trying to quit alcohol, so that episode was the first time we slapped each other. It just, on paper, was “Karen slaps Jack, Jack slaps Karen,” but of course Jimmy Burrows, who is incredible at physical comedy and directing, of course, said, “Let’s make a dance out of this.” So, we rehearsed the rhythm of it, because I think that’s what makes you laugh — that’s what makes me laugh: the pauses and then the slapping again and then the pause and the slap-slap. It’s music, so you have to rehearse the beats and the rhythms in order to get that. It makes me laugh even thinking about it.

What do you envision for Jack’s future? Well, I don’t want him to change too much because our friends are our friends from high school because they never change, right? Maybe get married, but still remain Jack somehow, or find a long-term relationship. Or maybe — maybe! — there’s someone close in his own life that might be a suitable partner for life. Who knows.

Will? I have no idea.

Could you see them together? Could I see Will and Jack together? Maybe!

You’ve said you want to see him with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Just so you know, I’m here for it. I think that would be a hilarious episode, and I hope Dwayne comes to his senses and comes to the Will & Grace stage to play and have a good time.

The post Just Sean! (Cue jazz hands) appeared first on Dallas Voice.

At 63, Leslie Jordan has a new TV show and is in-demand for personal appearances, like his upcoming gig for Legacy Counseling. We look inside his enduring career

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

Leslie Jordan is having a moment.

“I don’t know if it gets any better,” he purrs in that distinctive Tennessee twang that oozes sweet tea. “Just all of this out of the blue.”

“All of this” is his starring role in a new sitcom, The Cool Kids, which debuts on Fox Sept. 28. But it’s also the bread-and-butter of his career lately: Crisscrossing the country doing his live one-man, gossipy show.

“I’m going all around the country doing my show — it’s up to 44 venues a year! It’s still what I love doing — performing in front of a live audience.”

His next live performance will be right here in Dallas on Sept. 22 for his annual appearance in support of Legacy Counseling Center. But for the moment, he’s busy on a TV soundstage… for the first time as a regular on a broadcast sitcom since 1993, when Hearts Afire went off the air.

It all started nearly a year ago when his agent sent word that there was a sitcom he might want to audition for.

“They said it was from the boys who did It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and I said, ‘Oh, they’re cuuutttte! I’d love for them to be my bosses!” Jordan laughs.

The Cool Kids started as a pilot, written by Charlie Day, about three old men in a retirement home.

“They told me I was going in  to read for a 73-year-old straight man from Brooklyn — but, honey, I’m none of the above! I said I’ve got to put a different spin on it.” Needless to say, he not only got the role, but the part was rewritten to suit his unique attributes.

The pilot was filmed over Thanksgiving last year, with Jordan and his co-stars, a triumvirate of some of the most celebrated comedic talents of the past 50 years — Vicky Lawrence (The Carol Burnett Show, Mama’s Family), Martin Mull (Clue, Roseanne) and David Alan Grier (In Living Color, The Carmichael Show). Remarkably, Jordan — while a fan of all their work — hadn’t performed with most of them before.

“Vicky was already attached when I was hired, I said, Oh wonderful! Two old show ponies,” Jordan says. “I had only met her one time, in the airport in Puerto Vallarta. Then I heard David Alan Grier was attached, and him I had never met. And oh! He’s the gayest straight man I’ve ever met. I keep saying ‘Do Antoine Meriweather for me! Do Antoine Meriweather for me,’” a reference to Grier’s hilariously flamboyant ILC film critic. “But he won’t do it! He says that’s in the past.”

Mull was Jordan’s lone link to a past job. “Martin and I had worked together on this movie years ago called Ski Patrol — it was supposed to be Police Academy on skis, but it never went anywhere.”

Jordan wasn’t sure The Cool Kids would go anywhere, either. Networks film far more pilots than they can ever put on the air; even with its pedigree, it could have disappeared into oblivion. And in a way, it had — after filming it in November, Jordan basically heard nothing about its status until last May. Then, while filming a show for Britain Sky channel in Malaga, Spain, he got a frantic phone call from his management.

“They said, ‘Fox is picking up the show and you need to fly to New York to be there for the up-fronts tomorrow’ [where they announce their season and trot out the casts and creatives for TV critics],” he says. “I told them I couldn’t — I was filming a show! They said well, you’re contractually obligated to be there, so they flew me from Spain to New York and right back the next day. It was exhausting.”

The sudden change in circumstance meant Jordan had to cancel some of his personal appearances … but he made it clear to the producers that the Legacy gig was not one of them.

“I had to cancel a lot of my shows — there was no way I could go to P’town in August. But I’ve done the show in Dallas for many years now, and it’s a charity, and I love that it’s at the Cathedral of Hope this time.

I’m just gonna have to do it.”

The Cool Kids has a 13 episode order, with an option for eight more if it’s a hit, something Jordan feels might happen, based on the response so far.

“I love the multi-cam format — you rehearse on the sound stage all week and you roll in an audience right there. We were getting Will & Grace laughs — I’ve been doing sitcoms for 30 years and I’m usually the funny guy brought in to do the zinger. But this is [sustained laughter]. Vicky and I will do a line and the audience will howl — we have to hold until the laughter dies down,” he says. “It is the biggest, broadest slapstick — I say it’s The Golden Girls on crack. We had an episode where they wanted me in drag — I said I knew it would happen, I just didn’t know it would happen on episode 2!”

As we talk, Jordan is on a brief hiatus from filming The Cool Kids — they film three episodes in three weeks, then get a week off. The next hiatus frees him up both for his Dallas performance and to film a guest spot on another TV: playing Beverly Leslie, the sassy socialite on Will & Grace that won Jordan an Emmy Award.

“We film The Cool Kids on Friday night, I fly into Dallas Saturday morning for Legacy, then back to Will & Grace on Monday,” he says. “I sometimes wish this had happened to me 20 years ago, but then I think no, I would have messed it up.”

The post Cool and hot appeared first on Dallas Voice.

The gay co-creator and co-star  of the camptastic Netflix comedy ‘Schitt’s Creek’ on love, humor  and family

If you ever happen to bump into Dan Levy, thank him for Schitt’s Creek, his super-bingeable comedic riff on a once-affluent family forced to live like fish out of Perrier in the podunk Canadian town the show is named after. And thank him, he who created and developed the series — which premiered in 2015 on Pop TV (and can also be seen on Netflix) — for willfully remaining single only to craft and deliver more rib-tickling bons mots for the show’s fourth (and most affectionate) season, which is out now. Thank him again, while you’re at it, because the 34-year-old former MTV Canada co-host has somehow found the time to create yet another queer-themed project that he tells me is in the works.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For now, we have David Rose (Levy), replete with his color-averse apparel and drop-crotch pants, general distaste for people, and his animated and generally disgusted facial contortions worn like memes in the making. Johnny, David’s perpetually on-edge father, is played by real-life father and American Pie and Best in Show actor Eugene Levy, who also serves as the comedy’s co-creator. Together they’ve developed both a comedic knockout and a rich what-if satire of Kardashian life. Schitt’s Creek also stars Catherine O’Hara, as the deliciously histrionic wig-loving family matriarch and former soap star Moira, and Annie Murphy as Alexis, the self-involved-but-somehow-sweet daughter who once argued with David over who would get murdered first in their sketchy new motel digs.

Via an allegorical wine conversation with hotel co-owner Stevie Budd (Emily Hampshire) presented in the show’s first season, Schitt’s Creek expertly tackled David’s pansexuality (“I do drink red wine, but I also drink white wine; I like the wine, not the label”). Then there was a throuple, and now there’s Patrick (Noah Reid), a yin-yang match so absolutely perfect for David — notice all the ways he challenges David, especially with the potential mortification of this season’s open-mike night at the store they co-own together — you’d be heartbroken if they didn’t last.

Read on as Levy freewheeled his way through our conversation about living vicariously through David and Patrick’s loving relationship, opening the minds of parents with queer kids, and how David has influenced him to “to try to live my life more out loud.”             

— Chris Azzopardi

Dallas Voice: As a gay man, how personally rewarding is it to you to have one of the healthiest, most normal relationships on the show be between two queer men?

Dan Levy: You know, all I really can do is think back to a time when I didn’t think being myself was ever going to be a possibility. It’s such a full circle moment for me right now to be writing this love story for them and to look back at it and just remember that there was a time in my life when I honestly didn’t think that would be a possibility for myself. So, it’s incredible. And to have the network support to really be able to tell the kinds of stories that I want to tell with it and not have any interference is rare and a privilege. When you have that kind of freedom, there’s also a certain level of responsibility to try and tell the most authentic story you possibly can. I think with these two characters I didn’t want to reduce it to caricature. I didn’t want it to be some kind of lesson that we’re trying to ram down someone’s throat. It was really about presenting a story of two people who have found love with each other.

You’ve made very deliberate choices regarding the treatment of David’s sexuality both as it relates to him but also as it relates to the other people in his life.

Personally, I never learn when someone is trying to teach me something. I learn through experience, and presenting complete tolerance and acceptance across the board is the only scenario that should be existing right now. I want to show this without trying to make it feel like an educational lesson for people who don’t quite understand it.

The letters that I’ve gotten from families who are more conservative-leaning and who have never quite understood the fight — to have letters from these people explaining that they’ve never had a point of entry before, that was the most amazing and eye-opening part of this whole conversation. In a way, it opened my eyes to understanding them a little bit better and understanding that sometimes I look at it with, “How can I not see the bigotry?” But at the same time, if people do not know what they do not know, all you can try to do is guide them with a gentle hand.

You guided Larry King with a gentle hand last year when you were on Larry King Now to  talk about the show. It was really interesting to watch the dynamic between you and Larry as you explained pansexuality to him — that must’ve opened up a lot of eyes who hadn’t even heard the word “pansexual.”

It’s about having conversations. We should have more of them. Talk to people instead of coming at things with bats swinging — and don’t get me wrong, there are times when that is absolutely necessary. But I think when it comes to the world of sexuality, which is ever-changing, try to have a conversation with people and lead them down the path of acceptance by way of setting an example.

I’ve had great conversations with people on the streets who’ve come up and told me that when they came out of the closet their parents didn’t quite understand them, but by watching the show and seeing how accepting Johnny and Moira Rose are to their kids — the fact that it was never a question — allows them to feel safer, allows them to feel like, “Oh, why am I having such a problem with it when these people who I’ve come to know and love are not asking the same questions that I’m asking? Why am I asking them then?” And it’s changed the conversation in their house. You can’t ask for a more rewarding takeaway from the experience.

Did you need characters like them when you were younger?

It’s interesting, because it’s still kind of an ongoing conversation on the show in terms of Patrick being fresh out of the closet and exploring what that means. There’s fear on either side. And, yes, I grew up knowing that my parents ultimately would not have a problem with it, but when you’re going through that and you’re internalizing that much fear you get to a point where you ask yourself, “Well, maybe they will have a problem with it; maybe I’m misreading the situation.” There are so many questions that I think we’re forced to ask ourselves because we’re alone in that process.

Which show with queer themes did you gravitate toward most as you were coming into your own?
I guess it would be Will & Grace. I think Will & Grace really opened up the conversation. My So-Called Life affected me more just because I was such a huge fan of the show. I think we’ve come a long way, and there’s still a long way to go, but all you can really do is seize the opportunities that are given to you and try and make good with the power that TV can offer.

I watched the sixth episode of the new season, “Open Mic,” and it was the first time that I ugly cried watching the show. In fact, until then, I hadn’t cried listening to Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” either. When is the last time you serenaded a man?

Never! Because the intention is always to keep them! [That scene] all stems from a conversation I had with a friend of mine who was seeing someone who chose to sing to them and it really just disrupted the whole momentum of their relationship because, unlike Noah who has such a beautiful voice, this person did not, and it just didn’t work out in the end. But I knew Noah could sing, and I knew he was a musician going into it, so it was always my intention to somehow find a way for him to sing.

You know, I don’t love writing dialogue where people are talking about their feelings. I would much rather bring some fun, interesting and dynamic ways of showing that kind of feeling, and the idea that David would be so off-put and embarrassed by his partner choosing to sing in front of a room full of people — and then to know that Noah has this voice, and that in the end we could use this as a device to really cement them as a couple in ways that I don’t think they even expected — was really special.

And I had always had this fondness for the lyrics for that song, and for a long time whenever it came on at a bar or something, I would always be the person turning to someone saying, “The lyrics to this song are really beautiful.” When you’re listening to the Tina Turner version it’s just a pop song and people are like, “Yeah, I know, it’s fine,” and it’s like, “No, no, no — the lyrics are really beautiful.” So, when we thought of this idea, it was the only option, this idea that Patrick would sort of tease David with a flashy pop song but make it his own.

What is so lovely about that scene is it really subverts stereotypes about small town small-mindedness — the townies are there, and they’re celebrating Patrick and David’s love for each other right along with them.

It was our intention from the get-go to never make the town the butt of the joke and to always make the family sort of the joke. We wanted the town to always be this safety net for these people, and for them to always feel safe there.

Well, it gave me lots of hope.

Oh, good! That’s what we’re aiming to do, to be just a bit of a safe place for people for 21 minutes and 50 seconds a week.

Where does the line between Dan Levy and David Rose start and end?

Uh, there’s a big one! It’s interesting. Yeah, I would kill for his confidence.

I’d kill for some of his style. Every time I watch him I’m like, “Clearly, I need more black and I need more flow.”

[Laughs] It’s funny, ‘cause in promoting the show we talked to someone who was going through some of the outfits and it was sort of a “yea” or “nay” situation and it came upon the outfit that we wear when we’re doing the number [in Episode 3, “Asbestos Fest”]. I’m in, like, black with a baby’s breath sweater with matching pants and the person decided to “nay” the outfit, and I had to gently tell her that those pants were actually my own from home! Generally speaking, I wouldn’t wear it with a matching top, but I did wear it at one point in my real life.

I think I’ve always been excited about fashion, so to be able to style the show with our costume designer really just scratches that itch for me. As a character, though, I don’t think we’re alike. I think some of our neuroses probably exist — the lack of patience [laughs] — but you know, it’s funny, you start the first season of the show and these people are, on paper at least, really hard pills to swallow, and the intention of the show was to always make the takeaway “love doesn’t cost any money” and these people will slowly start to realize that. My takeaway from David has been to try to live my life more out loud because I think his unabashedness when it comes to just being authentically himself at all times is something I wish I employed in my own life.

But you do seem to be much more open about your sexuality than before the show.

I think when you start out it’s a really tough track to navigate. You can be really comfortable in your personal life, but the professional world is a very different beast. When gossip blogs were outing people — I really do feel like it’s such a tender thing; it’s a very sensitive thing for people, and there should be no pressure to do anything until you’re ready. I do know that there’s obligation, obviously, that comes with being someone who’s in the public eye and being able to use that, but for me it was just that you grow into yourself and you grow into what you want to share with people publicly. Because yeah, I do think that conversation is a tricky one, and actually, I am sort of naturally quite private and don’t like attention. (Laughs)

Last year your co-star Emily Hampshire, who plays Stevie, told me men expect her to be Stevie on dates and that she feels bad she’s not.

I know. She always says that: “Stevie’s so cool … and then I show up.” [Laughs]

Do you have an example of that happening to you?

Being a disappointment to people? Yes! … No — I think David has brought out the best in me as a person in terms of what I want to stand for and the kinds of things I want to fight for. I also have realized in ways that I never did before the reach that this show has to actually affect change in people’s homes, and you know, you have to run with that and you have to wave that flag proudly because there’s a lot of opposition out there. You have to constantly make sure that your megaphone is being heard over all the noise, which is why it was such a thrill for GLAAD to sponsor our L.A. event and to participate in the fundraising campaign. And again, you get to see people coming out of the woodwork and people of all different sort of backgrounds sending love to David and Patrick. It’s incredible to watch.

They’ve instilled hope that, maybe, people aren’t just looking for a quickie on Grindr.

Exactly.

It’s refreshing.

Yeah, it’s been really fun to play, and in a way, I often wonder if I wrote that as almost some kind of personal manifestation. If you write it, they will come.

Are they coming?

Not at the moment, but hopefully soon. It’s all so tricky because we put so much of our times into this show and, for me, it’s a 13-month commitment, so it’s hard to be open and available to someone in a relationship when my eye will always tend to wander back to the show. It’s finding the balance. But yeah … one day.

Are you interested in creating or playing more realistic portrayals of queerness that cut beyond caricature in the way David has?

Of course, yeah. There is a new show that I’m working on right now with quite an amazing queer character that I quite love. I wish I could tell you more about it. It’s pretty fun, and if it all works out we will talk again and I will give you the lowdown. But yes, if all goes to plan then there might be a new show coming out in the next couple of years.

The post Dan Levy is da Schitt appeared first on Dallas Voice.

In 1996, Dana Carvey, the breakout star of mid-’80s SNL’s deep bench, was the top sketch comedian in a generation, so the idea that he would launch a primetime network series seemed like a no-brainer. He and producer Robert Smigel assembled a creative team of then-nobodies, among them Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Louis C.K., Charlie Kaufman, Bob Odenkirk, Robert Carlock and a host of now-legends, who wrote and performed the surefire mid-season hit, The Dana Carvey Show.

It ran for seven miserable episodes.

Now, more 20 years later, the team reconvenes to do a post-mortem on one of the greatest failures in broadcast history. Too Funny to Fail: The Life and Death of the Dana Carvey Show was either ahead of its time or a hubristic boondoggle, where too-smart-for-their-own-good comedy artists bucked the network and even insulted their sponsors in search of a larf. But while a core coterie of fans saw the genius, the audience from their lead-in show, the massive, middle-brow hit Home Improvement, darted like lemmings in the 8:30 time slot, costing ABC a fortune and Carvey tons of credibility.

The documentary, which airs exclusively on Hulu, is full of Inside Baseball behind-the-scenes anecdotes, hilarious recollections and the good nature of people who acknowledge their failure, but have the distance to be candid about their own errors. It’s said comedy equals tragedy plus time; by that measure the tragedy that was The Dana Carvey Show now feels like comic brilliance.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

The post WHAT WE’RE WATCHING: ‘Too Funny to Fail’ appeared first on Dallas Voice.

Remember when the word “queer” was an insult hurled by homophobes against gay people? Remember a time before the words “metrosexual” and “zhuzh” has entered the lexicon? If not, good for you. But either way, we have a TV show to thank for it. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was a cultural phenomenon from 2002–06, making household names out of Carson Kressley and Ted Allen and doing extreme makeovers before that term existed, either. It ran its course, but all things just keep getting better… especially given a lapse in time. (Will & Grace, X Files, Roseanne…. We’re looking at you.)

The new incarnation of the show, called simply Queer Eye, has returned via Netflix for an eight-episode tryout, and what a welcome return it is. The set-up is essentially the same, with five out gay men descending on schlubby, mostly middle-aged straight men from Greater Atlanta, to teach them how to live better lives with style. I say mostly, because one notable episode involves AJ, a ripped, shy but secretly freaky gay man who hasn’t come out yet. If you’re not sobbing openly by the end, you might wanna seek counseling. And that happens over and over.

Forget the tongue-clucking about how the show promotes stereotypes, and just enjoy what it has to offer: Feelings of pride, hope and joy. Hey, we’re called “gay” for a reason.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

The post WHAT WE’RE STREAMING: ‘Queer Eye’ on Netflix appeared first on Dallas Voice.

She’s a polarizing figure, but we’re still anxious to see the rebooted sitcom break new ground

Roseanne Barr knows how to keep tongues wagging. From her infamous bungling of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and my-way-or-the-highway tyranny on the set of her groundbreaking sitcom to her failed presidential bid and accusation that Ireland (yes, the whole darn country) is anti-Semitic, the self-proclaimed domestic goddess has been a controversial pop-culture mainstay for more than 30 years.
This month, the legendary comedienne will return with her original TV family and friends to ABC’s primetime lineup tonight. How will she make us laugh, side-eye, and ask WTF next? Who knows, but here are six things I’d like to see the series tackle in Season 10.
Gay Darlene. In the finale of Roseanne’s original run, it was revealed by newly widowed matriarch Roseanne that her daughter Darlene (Sara Gilbert) was married to her sister Becky’s (Lecy Goranson) husband Mark (the late Glenn Quinn), not his brother David (Johnny Galecki), whom she had been with since Season 4. The latter storyline was explained as a fictional plot in a story that Roseanne had written about her life, which, as it turned out, encompassed the entire series. Nothing that we had watched over the past nine years was as it seemed. That fan-disappointing decision will be retconned in the reboot, leaving everything leading up to S9 of the original series as canon. Praise Jesus. In the reboot, however, Darlene and David will be separated, opening up the potential opportunity for her to date women, which seems appropriate since Sara Gilbert is a lesbian in a real life. Just don’t expect it to happen immediately since Darlene’s 9-year-old gender-nonconforming son Mark (Ames McNamara) will be the basis for any initial LGBT diversity storylines. Not complaining, though; representation is representation.
George Clooney cameo. Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) was known for her revolving door of one-night stands and sometimes boyfriends — and a very tumultuous but short-lived marriage to her baby daddy Fred (Michael O’Keeffe) — but none shared the kind of chemistry with her as first-season love interest, Booker, played by George Clooney. Of course, GC’s a big-shot Hollywood movie star now — and has been for the past 20 years — so it’s probably a long shot that he’ll make a guest appearance. On the other hand, the Oscar-nominated Laurie Metcalf is a star in her own right, and Friends landed Brad Pitt and Julie Roberts in its heyday, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
The return of Kathy Bowman. Roseanne and Dan Conner (John Goodman) dealt with their fair share of neighbors over the years — who could forget the elderly nudists? — but the most formidable was “needle-butt” Kathy Bowman (Meagen Fay), Roseanne’s arch-nemesis from the minute she and her husband Jerry moved next door to 714 Delaware St. It was a rivalry for the ages until Roseanne inadvertently helped burglars dressed as good Samaritans (one of whom looked like Bob Hope) rob Kathy’s house, which ultimately drove the snippy housewife back to her hometown of Chicago. Fay is still a fixture on television — she most recently guested on ABC’s Dr. Ken — and if the network knows what’s good for its loyal Roseanne lovers, she’ll at least make a pit stop in Lanford one more time.
All the grown-up babies. When we last left the Conners in 1997, Roseanne had baby Jerry Garcia, Jackie had baby Andy, and Darlene had just popped out baby Harris before the series finale. Baby Harris will be featured in the revival (now a teenager of 14 years old instead of the actual age of 21 she would be in real time) — as will her brother Mark and cousin Mary (Jayden Rey), daughter of D.J. Conner (Michael Fishman). As for Jerry Garcia and Andy, they’re still part of the continuity, according to Roseanne, but the characters will not appear in Season 10.
Dan’s boat. What ever happened to Dan’s boat? Some Roseanne-philes consider it a casualty of the writers’ room, just another abandoned plot point, while others seem to remember Dan’s mentally ill mother setting it on fire. Whatever the truth is — which is hard to discern from a show like Roseanne — I hope it makes a comeback. If they can resurrect Dan from the dead (it was revealed he died of a heart attack in the series finale), surely they can put a half-completed boat back up on cinderblocks.
Topical subject matter. One of the greatest legacies of Roseanne, and why it was a top 20 show for eight of its nine seasons (No. 1 overall in 1989), is that it never shied away from controversial subject matter. From first periods and teenage masturbation to gay marriage and race relations, Roseanne blazed a trail across the television landscape, the effects of which can still be seen in sitcoms today. You can expect more of the same from the reboot — Roseanne the comedienne is still as feisty as ever — as they tackle the Trump administration (Roseanne the character admits she voted for the kook in an early episode), gender-identity issues, for-hire surrogacy, and mixed-race families. Throw an episode about gun control in there and we’re halfway to an Emmy nom.

—Mikey Rox

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The comedian returns to a TV classic, and doesn’t mince words on Roseanne’s politics and Kathy Griffin’s activism
Before unloading her frank thoughts on TV co-star Roseanne Barr’s alt-right politics and fellow comic Kathy Griffin’s viral Trump-beheading pic (“It just wasn’t funny”), Sandra Bernhard proclaims herself quite aptly as “no-nonsense.” That has been, after all, her way since the ’70s, when lambasting Hollywood’s who’s-who first proved lucrative for the fearless comedian, actress and musician.
Then, from 1991-1997, she famously put a face to bisexuality not just as herself – Bernhard was out from the get-go — but as Nancy Bartlett on ABC’s hit sitcom Roseanne. Introduced in season four as the estranged lesbian wife of Arnie Thomas (Tom Arnold), Nancy, who later came out as bisexual, gets chummy with Roseanne Conner and Jackie Harris, Roseanne’s younger sister (Laurie Metcalf).
Bernhard, 62, will revisit her groundbreaking character during the show’s revival (its second week begins tonight; it has already been renewed for a second season). As for the controversy regarding Roseanne and her TV alter ego’s support for President Trump? “Roseanne is gonna be another round of really fun and really smart television,” she tells me. “Roseanne has never turned on the gay community. Roseanne likes to stir the pot. She always has. So, I guess that’s the way she’s doing it now, and I don’t agree with any of the Trump shit, but I think she’ll transcend that and the show will still be amazing.”

— Chris Azzopardi

Dallas Voice: What can we expect politically from the Roseanne reboot?  Sandra Bernhard: I think they’re gonna do a deep dive into where the working class is at right now. I mean, maybe not as deep as you would need, considering that half of the working class who don’t have their industrial-ass jobs anymore are strung out on opioids. That’s not very much fun; I don’t think they’ll go there [laughs]. But I think we’re in a real crossroads in this country, and Roseanne has always been good at revealing that, and at the same time making it funny and moving and insightful. I’m only in the last episode, so I don’t know exactly how they’re approaching it. I know there will be very personal stories like there always were, as opposed to globalizing it. I think that’s what makes the show special.
I imagine you’ve been hearing about the backlash Roseanne’s politics have ignited since the reboot was announced.  I was hearing about that way before they announced the reboot, and I just dropped out of the conversation because I don’t want to get into that on Twitter. You can’t do that; it goes nowhere. And everybody who makes political decisions also has to live with the fallout. That goes for famous, successful people and for people on the street. If you voted for Trump and you thought it was gonna be a lark and funny, the results are right there in front of you every day.
My hope is that it might bridge some severe societal gaps, maybe open some minds, maybe even my own. But it’s been very difficult for people who didn’t vote for Trump to even begin to understand or empathize with someone who supported him.  I don’t have any empathy for people who voted for him. Honestly, I really don’t. It’s obvious that he didn’t know anything about the working class population; he exploited it and [his supporters] were naive and unwilling to read or to know what was really going on. He played them, and to a certain extent the few people who are still in his corner, he still plays them. So it’s just kind of a bummer.
A lot of people have strong opinions about the liberal-minded cast returning to a show led by a Trump supporter.  I’m glad they do. She should hear it. And it’s better for her to hear it from the people that have supported her and watched her show than it is from me. I mean, we’re friends, we’re friendly, and I’ll continue to do the show. But it gets underneath your skin when 20 million people who used to watch your show are like, “What the fuck?”
She seems to know how people feel about her politics based on her appearance at the Golden Globes, when she said, “I’m kind of known for creating some great drama” while presenting with co-star John Goodman.   Of course she knows.
Well, I’m excited to have Nancy Bartlett back. You told me in 2013 that you didn’t think Nancy would have a place on the show if it ever returned.  It’s not that she didn’t have a place. But I didn’t think they’d be able to fit her story back in because of all the new characters and the family and reestablishing what’s been going on politically, so when they added the extra episode and wrote me in I was thrilled.
Nancy was one of the earliest portrayals of bisexuality on TV. What surprised you most about how her sexuality was treated on the show in the ’90s?  I mean, she was fun and it was a fun concept that she ran from being married to Tom Arnold into the relationship with Morgan Fairchild. It was sort of a lark at first, and of course it evolved. They wouldn’t let me kiss Morgan Fairchild under the mistletoe — we had to cut the kiss — so that’s how far we’ve come in terms of what you see sexually on TV.
But yeah, she was a funny, kooky, free-spirited character who got to do things and say things that was part of the evolution of sexuality on TV. It wasn’t intentional — it wasn’t like we were trying to do something groundbreaking. But that is how Roseanne is and was. She just did things that felt organic and authentic. She ended up having the actual kiss with Merle Hemingway [at a gay bar that Nancy took her to], but nonetheless, Nancy’s fun, and if they picked up the show again they’ll expand her story.
We’ll get more Nancy if there’s another season?  Oh yeah, absolutely. For sure, yeah.
Roseanne will have a genderfluid grandson, Mark — played by newcomer Ames McNamara — on the show as well.  Yes.
What are your thoughts on the show continuing to be inclusive?  I just think there has to be a little bit of everything in all the shows now, and I don’t know. I’ve gotta see the show before I can comment. He’s in my episode, but to the extent of what they’re trying to do with that character, we’ll have to see.
Speaking more generally, how do you feel about representation as far as LGBTQ people go on TV?  It’s certainly gotten a helluva lot better than when Nancy first came on the scene. And I think with each year that goes by, especially with the advent of Hulu and Netflix and Amazon, there’s been major breakthroughs.
Are you currently enjoying any shows with LGBTQ characters?  I watch 9-1-1 just because I think it’s a ridiculous show. Everywhere you turn there’s new, interesting gay characters. But I don’t go to a show for that. For me, my life has never been informed by that. I’ve always been comfortable with who I am sexually. I’ve been sexually fluid, I’ve broken all the ground rules since I was 17 years old. So, I’ve never had any need for somebody to be my role model. I’ve been my own role model. So, it’s a non-issue. But I think for the public at large it’s been a great time and a revolutionary time for people to see all kinds of characters — racially, sexually, women, men — come to life in a new way.
Have you heard of the very gay-centric Schitt’s Creek?  Honey, I was one of the first people to be hip to it!
Oh, snap.  I know, yes. But yeah, of course. Love it. Dan Levy is terrific — super funny and smart.
What can we expect from you in the future?  I’ve got three scripted projects I’m trying to get off the ground right now, so that’s a lot of my focus, and it’s a lot of hard work. So, I’m chipping away at that and, of course, continuing to go up for other roles as an actress and do my live performing.
What kind of scripts are you working on?  They’re all comedic. One is based on my early years in LA when I started off as a manicurist. One is a project with [performance artist] Justin Vivian Bond. We wrote a musical about six years ago called Arts & Crafts and we’re trying to get it into a TV series.
I remember you telling me you’d never stoop so low to do a reality show. Still out of the question?  Yeah, listen, if I haven’t done it by now, I’m certainly not gonna do it at this late date.
How do you feel about the way comedy has addressed the Trump era?  Everybody’s speaking about it and being funny and creative about it, and obviously people like Bill Maher and those types do it in a more political way. I think it’s been really interesting.
Has your recent comedy reflected current politics?  Sort of, kind of through the back door. I don’t hit people over the head talking about that stuff because so many people are good at doing it verbatim, so I try to keep it more global than just obvious.
Did you think Kathy Griffin went too far with the picture of her holding Trump’s decapitated head?   It’s not about going too far — it just wasn’t funny, and she’s not political. Why is she suddenly jumping on the bandwagon? That’s not what she does. And it wasn’t smart enough or interesting enough. That was its biggest crime.
But Kathy Griffin has been politically engaged and an activist for the gay community.  She’s an activist? I don’t know. I don’t think she’s an activist, frankly. I mean, that’s – she certainly takes advantage of the gay population in her way, but I don’t think she’s done anything earth-shattering for … I mean, I don’t agree.
Who would you consider an entertainer and an activist?  I mean, I’m an activist for being a human being. There’s bigger fish to fry, and my work is inherently political, and it’s been inherently LGBTQ-informed because it’s who I am; it’s what I’ve done from the beginning. I don’t call my audience “my gays.” My audience is my audience and everybody in it forms an alliance every night. You perform for the _entire_ crowd – it’s not about singling anyone out. And if your work is very, very daring and interesting, then smart people come to it, whether they’re gay, straight, black, white, men, women. I mean, you gotta be able to get underneath what’s really going on culturally, and then you’re always gonna have a smart audience sitting in front of you.
Who else in the comedy world can really dig into the cultural zeitgeist?  I don’t have a litany of people I’m sitting here thinking about. I’m sorry. It’s, like, too hard to do that. Right now the people who are impressing me the most are all these kids from the school in Florida. They’re activists. Went through a terrible trauma and they’ve been able to transform it into total activation, and that to me is really impressive and exciting. To talk about entertainers and people – it’s easy for all of us to do all that stuff because we’re not under duress, but when you’ve been practically possibly severely injured or murdered, yeah, that’s something to really applaud and stand by.
 

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