I can’t attest to the entire slate of Netflix series — there are roughly 200 million of them — but I hazard to guess that among the original documentaries, standup specials, movies, comedies and dramas, there’s been nary a traditional reality show among the lot… until now. Because on Friday, Dancing Queen drops all eight of its episodes.

This might not be cause to take notice, except that the location of the series is North Texas and the subject of it is Justin Johnson, better known by the nom-de-drag Alyssa Edwards. Alyssa, of course, is a fierce local pageant queen, and a fan favorite from her stints on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but out of dresses, he’s Justin, an experienced dancer from Mesquite, Texas. And over in Mesquite, he’s better known to stage moms and tween girls as the demanding studio owner and coach who turns little princesses’ dreams of being ballerinas into something approaching reality.

If you’ve seen Dance Moms (or Toddlers and Tiaras, etc.), you probably have a sense for the kind of show Dancing Queen is; the tension gets uncomfortable in Episode 2, when Justin has to pick the “haves” and “have-nots” among his students, and at least one mom confronts him about how he could pick another girl over her daughter. But Justin defuses the situation by reassuring the child, if not the parent; when mom then gets vicious, he walks about.

Let that sink in: The drag queen avoids the fight and takes the higher ground. That alone sets this show apart.

And maybe only that. The “candid” moments, as with most reality TV, are contrived (Justin revisiting the home he grew up in, as if it just occurred to him on the spur of the moment to drive by), even if the emotions are authentic; the beats predictably divided as if by commercial breaks (even though there are no commercials on Netflix). It might as well be scripted.

But then there’s Justin/Alyssa, whose homespun, scrappy, buck-toothed trashiness gussies up into an equally trashy glamour queen, makes a likable onscreen personality (though nobody need me to tell them that). And the local scenery (The Tejas Motel on I-30 makes a fleeting appearance, as does the Round-Up Saloon, among other locales) and seeing some of the background people will trigger nods of familiarity for locals. (They use the industrial-strength filter in many of the scenes not seen since a pound of Vaseline made Joan Collins look 20 years younger.) On the other hand, Justin is the only memorable character in the two episodes made available for preview. And because the entire first season can be binged in an afternoon, I’m not sure what will compel viewers to come back a year from now…. Unless you think they might bring you in to be a star. Good luck with that.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

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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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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.”

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I can’t attest to the entire slate of Netflix series — there are roughly 200 million of them — but I hazard to guess that among the original documentaries, standup specials, movies, comedies and dramas, there’s been nary a traditional reality show among the lot… until now. Because on Friday, Dancing Queen drops all eight of its episodes.

This might not be cause to take notice, except that the location of the series is North Texas and the subject of it is Justin Johnson, better known by the nom-de-drag Alyssa Edwards. Alyssa, of course, is a fierce local pageant queen, and a fan favorite from her stints on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but out of dresses, he’s Justin, an experienced dancer from Mesquite, Texas. And over in Mesquite, he’s better known to stage moms and tween girls as the demanding studio owner and coach who turns little princesses’ dreams of being ballerinas into something approaching reality.

If you’ve seen Dance Moms (or Toddlers and Tiaras, etc.), you probably have a sense for the kind of show Dancing Queen is; the tension gets uncomfortable in Episode 2, when Justin has to pick the “haves” and “have-nots” among his students, and at least one mom confronts him about how he could pick another girl over her daughter. But Justin defuses the situation by reassuring the child, if not the parent; when mom then gets vicious, he walks about.

Let that sink in: The drag queen avoids the fight and takes the higher ground. That alone sets this show apart.

And maybe only that. The “candid” moments, as with most reality TV, are contrived (Justin revisiting the home he grew up in, as if it just occurred to him on the spur of the moment to drive by), even if the emotions are authentic; the beats predictably divided as if by commercial breaks (even though there are no commercials on Netflix). It might as well be scripted.

But then there’s Justin/Alyssa, whose homespun, scrappy, buck-toothed trashiness gussies up into an equally trashy glamour queen, makes a likable onscreen personality (though nobody need me to tell them that). And the local scenery (The Tejas Motel on I-30 makes a fleeting appearance, as does the Round-Up Saloon, among other locales) and seeing some of the background people will trigger nods of familiarity for locals. (They use the industrial-strength filter in many of the scenes not seen since a pound of Vaseline made Joan Collins look 20 years younger.) On the other hand, Justin is the only memorable character in the two episodes made available for preview. And because the entire first season can be binged in an afternoon, I’m not sure what will compel viewers to come back a year from now…. Unless you think they might bring you in to be a star. Good luck with that.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

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The sitcom star addresses the value of ‘Will & Grace’ now and why the show could have backfired

Eric McCormack auditioned for the role of a gay title lawyer on Will & Grace without realizing the effect he’d have on closeted teenagers. “I was worried about network executives and what the gay community would think,” he says, “but when I was thinking of the gay community, I wasn’t thinking of 16-year-olds.”

In 1998, when the sitcom touched down on NBC in a TV universe that was distinctly less gay, the show presented itself as farcical comedy. But by the time it ran its course, ending (or so we thought) in 2006, Will & Grace was, through sheer existence, a cultural landmark leading the way for LGBTQ inclusivity in entertainment and in the broader world.

And those ’90s teenagers? “What has been revealed is that it was [them] sort of peeking over [their] parents’ shoulder going, ‘OK, I like this show, this show’s for me,’ and, ‘Hey, if my mom likes this show then I can do this,’” McCormack says.

Eleven years went by without Will, his roommate Grace (Debra Messing), his gay pal Jack (Sean Hayes) and Jack’s rollicking, boozed bestie, Karen (Megan Mullally). Marriage equality happened. More queer characters — trans, of color, non-conforming — happened. And in 2017, with Trump jabs and jokes scoffing at discriminatory cake bakers, Will & Grace returned to NBC with a new agenda for the queer-comedy revolution it once led.

Recently, McCormack received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and became the recipient of the Point Foundation’s Impact Award in recognition of his significant impact on the LGBTQ community. Here, the actor reflects on playing Will during a more conservative time in America, the episode NBC cut from reruns and the significance of gay actors portraying his love interests.

— Chris Azzopardi

Dallas Voice: When you first began playing Will, how much more attention did you get from gay men? Eric McCormack: Well, I’m from the theater, so I was pretty much already gettin’ my share!

But this is national primetime television, known to the world. I think that was the most interesting journey, because in the theater, all through my 20s, when I first started doing television guest spots in Toronto and Vancouver, I did a bunch of gay roles. I was a bartender at the gay bar, and I was the guy in the office who the girl thought was coming onto her — but I say, “Honey, I’m gay.” These roles accumulated for me, and nobody else knew I was doing them. When Will finally landed for me, I didn’t have to go out and do a lot of research. My best friends were gay men. I grew up in the theater. So, it was a natural extension.

But when it suddenly, as you say became “national,” there was — yeah, you have to be careful with that [attention], though, because what happens automatically is NBC phones and says, “Hey, People magazine wants to do a thing on you,” and of course People magazine always features you and your wife in the kitchen making pasta, right? Or something dopey like that. [Laughs] So within two months it’s clear [I’m] married, but you don’t want it to look like you begged People magazine to show the world that you’re straight. It could’ve backfired, and that’s the thing I’m always grateful for: the LGBT community could’ve just said, “Eh, another one, no.” But they didn’t.

Representation has evolved and shifted in the last 20 years, and now there’s more criticism of straight actors taking on LGBTQ roles. Can you reflect on that era versus now as far as straight actors portraying LGBTQ characters? I think the pendulum swings, and I really do think it’s project to project. I think what we’re doing with the trans community — first of all, that wasn’t even an expression for most Americans five years ago, so it’s important how we handle that because a lot of Americans will go, “Well, trans is like what? He puts on a dress?” A lot of people just don’t know. So, it’s important that, if there is a role that is specifically trans, we cast a trans actor so that we start to educate.

The flipside to me is that whenever someone says you were straight playing gay, I say, “Well, yeah, Neil Patrick Harris played the biggest womanizer and he’s quite openly gay, so I feel like it’s OK.” So I think if there’s a balance, and if it happens in the right ways, if we make sure that people of color and women are represented, that we’re doing the right thing by all the communities that have needed it, then it’s great. But if we swing too far the other way, we’re starting to get to a point where I think we’re missing the forest for the trees.

Did you ever experience any pushback being a straight actor playing a gay character on TV? There was a little. I remember Larry Kramer, who of course was such an activist in the gay community, said something and I thought, Does Larry Kramer even know what Will & Grace is? That was just amazing to me. So, I thought if anyone is gonna pushback, I guess it’d be him. But in terms of pushback from America, it didn’t really happen. There were no pickets, there were no letters to NBC. I think they were very wise and eased us into the weeks on Monday and then we eased onto Tuesday, and then the next thing you know it was Thursday and we were winning an Emmy and it was OK. America actually dealt with it very well.

Do you have any real-life examples of how Will and Jack spoke to the part of America that didn’t understand or weren’t accepting of LGBTQ people? The thing I always loved from the beginning: We were making a very right-down-the-middle, must-see-TV kind of show that just happened to have two gay characters. But they were not matching gay characters, and to have those two as best friends who support each other but also occasionally criticize each other, I thought that was possibly the most educational piece for Americans who didn’t have a lot of gay friends.

To see how Jack would criticize Will for not being out there, for not being loud and proud, for not dating enough, and Will would — there was an episode [in Season 1, called “Will Works Out”] that was quite amazing where we were in the same gym and Jack was flouncing about. Will kind of mutters the F word under his breath — calls him a fag — and it’s something that when [Jack] says it to Grace, he’s like, “Will, what’s the matter with you?” And Will is like, “He’s embarrassing! He embarrasses me!” Will eventually apologies because it’s his own inability to be himself, but we tackle that. NBC stopped showing it in reruns for a while because it really was a big word to say, particularly from a character that we wanted you to love.

When the revival was announced, there were people who weren’t sure what to expect from a Will & Grace in 2017 because the community had made so much progress since the show’s first iteration. Were you guys hearing the noise, and if so, how were you responding to it behind the scenes? Most of the noise that we got came after everybody saw the piece we did for Hillary [Clinton], the 10 minutes on YouTube, which just proved it was possible for us to do this again. People generally were excited about that. That’s what I heard, mostly. Then, as we got closer, there were pundits saying, “How valuable can it be in 2017?” And my response is always: It only needs to be this valuable because it’s a sitcom. We’re not a parade that is marching in city hall and shouting. We’re a sitcom, and we shout in our own way.

Except you were a groundbreaking sitcom, so there’s a lot of social and political weight attached to the show. Yeah, so: Will we live up to that in that way? It’s like your queer uncle that was marching back in ’78: Maybe he doesn’t have the loud voice, maybe he can’t march as fast now, but he is still just as important. And, in fact, those older gay voices — I loved that episode where Will educates [a character played by] Ben Platt [last season]. It’s like, “You young gays can’t take any of this for granted. This was fought for and people were beat up and died to get here so that your father and your mother could throw you a wedding with your boyfriend.” This is the result of a revolution, and so were Will and Grace and Jack and Karen.

So, I think we kind of showed up, but we didn’t want to make it a victory lap, either. We wanted to make sure there was still currency, and I think the way in for that, particularly with Jack and Will, was: What’s life like when you’re almost 50 and you’re not the hottest guy on the block but you’re still living that life, you’re still in New York and you’ve loved and lost, as they both have? And what do you want out of life? That’s a cool, new storyline — and, again, nobody was telling exactly that story.

The show’s first revival season in 2017 tackled politics and other hot-button issues. What topic from this current season do you most appreciate the show working in? I think, obviously, the umbrella topic they’re using in the ads is the idea of marriage. Jack is going to get married, and so that’s great. We had episodes [before the revival] where I had the closest thing you could get to marriage back then with Taye Diggs, and then again with Bobby Cannavale.

I mean, to me, that’s one of my proudest moments on the show, that I actually had a commitment ceremony in Will’s apartment with Taye Diggs, a white man and a black man, a big, long kiss. Hall & Oates performed [laughs]. And it was virtually not even spoken of. This is probably season six or seven, but it barely even made the press because people were so like, “Whatever. Who’s Will making out with this week?” But people don’t remember that always. They always wanna talk about, “Well, Will is a bit sterile.” It’s like, No, no; if you watch the show throughout, I had Patrick Dempsey, I had Bobby Cannavale. I had lots of hot guys and married a couple of them.

And if anyone has forgotten, you get with Matt Bomer this season to remind people. Well, first of all, he’s the greatest guy. So freakin’ funny and gay, so it’s not like the old days where we get another straight guy to come in and we both act gay together. Now there’s a bit more authenticity to it, and he was so great that I think we’ll see more of Matt.

Is the dynamic different for you when your love interest is played by a gay actor? When I think of last season, it’s three romantic moments I had and all three were with men who are actually gay and they were all Broadway guys, which was just great: Andrew Rannells and Ben Platt and Cheyenne Jackson. And yeah, for me I just loved that. It’s a step forward, and there will always be someone from the community saying, “Well, why aren’t they in bed?” And I’ll go, yeah, I know, but we still have the Ku Klux Klan. Let’s remember that this is a public network; it’s 9 o’clock, and we want young kids that haven’t been able to come out to their parents to watch the show and have that parent love the show. The show was never about overtly pushing buttons. We were competing with Sex and the City where they could do anything they wanted because they were HBO. We had to do it more surreptitiously, more subtly.

I’ve seen some steamy stuff on primetime, though. I remember Desperate Housewives had a lot of bedroom scenes with that gardener. True, but there is a difference. We are actually a four-camera sitcom, so the way that we have to get under people’s skin, the way that we have to be shocking is different; we have to do it with a lot of care. We’re not callous about it. The jokes we choose, either politically or sexually, we play them throughout the week, we figure it out before we get in front of that audience, because we want to be around and we want to continue to be a voice and an example.

Sometimes all it takes is one bad decision, one bad joke, one situation that turns people off and all of a sudden we’re not in the top 20 or 30. Everything is calculated so that we can stay around and continue to be us, and it’s certainly changed in 20 years, but it’s still a country where people won’t get their cakes baked by a freakin’ baker, so it’s changed, but not as much as we’d like to hope.

Sean alluded to possibly seeing Jack and Will together, romantically, in the future. Do you see that as a possibility? In a gay way, that’s the Sam and Diane of it all. Early on, because that’s how conservative network television was, people were thinking, “Well, maybe Will and Grace will get together, maybe she’ll fix him!” And as time went by, they started to realize that’s not what this show is. This is not the gay-conversion comedy. But Will and Jack — it’s my favorite stuff to play. When he and I are together, we have so much fun. But we have to be careful how much we tease that out, because you do that and then that’s a different show.

You played gay at a time when some straight male actors were told not to for the sake of their career. As a straight man auditioning for a gay role, did you or your team have any concerns? I don’t remember that being a thing. I got two scenes into reading it and I just thought, “This is one of those shows. This is a Thursday night show. I bet they get Jim Burrows to direct it.” It just read like that, and that overpowered any fears. Plus, by that time, I’m 35, I’d been in the business a while, I’d been watching Seinfeld and Friends for years — that’s what I wanted.

And I think probably the opposite happened, because I had played a number of gay roles — I’d done drag roles — so this not only didn’t scare me but it made me think, “This is the one whose head will rise above the crowd because it’s not just Suddenly Susan or Caroline in the City; this is its own thing. There’s no other show like this at the moment.” And that’s what proved to happen.

But can you still walk in heels? [Laughs] You caught me on a good day — I’m breakin’ in a new pair of pumps.

The post Eric McCormack’s comedic (r)evolution 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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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.”

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I can’t attest to the entire slate of Netflix series — there are roughly 200 million of them — but I hazard to guess that among the original documentaries, standup specials, movies, comedies and dramas, there’s been nary a traditional reality show among the lot… until now. Because on Friday, Dancing Queen drops all eight of its episodes.

This might not be cause to take notice, except that the location of the series is North Texas and the subject of it is Justin Johnson, better known by the nom-de-drag Alyssa Edwards. Alyssa, of course, is a fierce local pageant queen, and a fan favorite from her stints on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but out of dresses, he’s Justin, an experienced dancer from Mesquite, Texas. And over in Mesquite, he’s better known to stage moms and tween girls as the demanding studio owner and coach who turns little princesses’ dreams of being ballerinas into something approaching reality.

If you’ve seen Dance Moms (or Toddlers and Tiaras, etc.), you probably have a sense for the kind of show Dancing Queen is; the tension gets uncomfortable in Episode 2, when Justin has to pick the “haves” and “have-nots” among his students, and at least one mom confronts him about how he could pick another girl over her daughter. But Justin defuses the situation by reassuring the child, if not the parent; when mom then gets vicious, he walks about.

Let that sink in: The drag queen avoids the fight and takes the higher ground. That alone sets this show apart.

And maybe only that. The “candid” moments, as with most reality TV, are contrived (Justin revisiting the home he grew up in, as if it just occurred to him on the spur of the moment to drive by), even if the emotions are authentic; the beats predictably divided as if by commercial breaks (even though there are no commercials on Netflix). It might as well be scripted.

But then there’s Justin/Alyssa, whose homespun, scrappy, buck-toothed trashiness gussies up into an equally trashy glamour queen, makes a likable onscreen personality (though nobody need me to tell them that). And the local scenery (The Tejas Motel on I-30 makes a fleeting appearance, as does the Round-Up Saloon, among other locales) and seeing some of the background people will trigger nods of familiarity for locals. (They use the industrial-strength filter in many of the scenes not seen since a pound of Vaseline made Joan Collins look 20 years younger.) On the other hand, Justin is the only memorable character in the two episodes made available for preview. And because the entire first season can be binged in an afternoon, I’m not sure what will compel viewers to come back a year from now…. Unless you think they might bring you in to be a star. Good luck with that.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

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The new Fab Five improved upon the classic ‘Queer Eye.’

Binge worthy

What we watched — and listened to — on the small screen in 2018

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

We live in a media world now where what we think of as TV, as movies, as old and as new, have begun to blur lines. Is a remastered version of a cult 1960s TV show, newly-available on a streaming platform, any less new than the latest season of This Is Us… or the debut episode of a first-season broadcast show?

All are new to you.

But with so much tube out there to be consumed — on broadcast, cable, premiere cable and digital online platforms — there’s simply too much for any single human to consume.

Which is why we have critics. Humanity is incidental, but not required.

And it’s why I limit by Tube year-end list only to shows that debuted in the U.S. within the previous 12 months (well, actually, November–October, to allow myself time to keep up with late additions to the bingeverse). Yeah yeah, we all already know how great The Americans is, but even if it had a great final season, why not give first-time shows a chance to find their audiences? There’s too many of those already. (Seriously. And the source of most new TV shows, to be totally honest, is Netflix — every other platform pales by comparison. A Netflix account and HBO Go are about all you need to get lost in the ether.)

And so, from sitcom to drama, variety to reality to documentary, miniseries to Podcasts, here are my top new shows of 2018, in ascending order.

10. Random Acts of Flyness (HBO). If you can figure out a way to describe what this show is, I welcome it. A hodgepodge of skits, satire, music, experimental video and who-knows-what, this late-night variety show recalled the days of Monty Python, only woke.

9. Grown-ish (Free Form). This cable-based spin-off from ABC’s primetime sitcom Black-ish follows the oldest Johnson daughter Zooey (Yara Shahidi) during her freshman year of college. Appearing on the Free Form network — the rebranded ABC Family — it could have played it safe with lame tween memes. But instead, it tackles real young-millennial issues about relationships and self-reliance with a lot of attractive and diverse cast members.

8. Mindhunter (Netflix). Filmmaker David Fincher has well-established bona fides as a master of the criminal mind mystery (Se7en, Zodiac, Gone Girl), and this 10-part series (scheduled for a second season in 2020) — which he produced and directed episodes of, is part and parcel of that skill-set. Set in 1977, it follows the incipient days of the FBI’s efforts to detect serial killers, as seen through the eyes of an enthusiastic but doubt-ridden young agent (Jonathan Groff). It’s a methodical series with a long arc, feeling like a mix of Law & Order and The X Files, with the added horror that it’s based on real people who go bump in the dark.

7. Serial (Podcast). Technically, this may seem like just another season of an already-lauded Podcast. But as an anthology show, I give it a pass because each season is unique. The third season of this groundbreaking series is not quite up to the level of the first — which startled everyone with a tale of a man in jail for a murder he didn’t seem to have committed — but this time, in covering a year in the life of a courthouse in the Midwest, we got a broader perspective about the nature of the justice system, and it was shocking.

6. Wild Wild Country (Netflix). If you’re old enough to remember the name Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, you probably have a vague sense of a cult fueled by sexual freedom and financial monkey business that took root in the American West, then collapsed and fell off the radar. But the truth of what went on is far more complex and compelling, and ultimately leaves you torn. This documentary miniseries explores the shocking background of the failed colony known as Rajneeshpuram and how great — and terrible — it was. The central figure of Sheela is one of the most fascinating figures to appear on screens in 2018.

5. The Last O.G. (TBS). Tracy Morgan returned to television following his near-fatal car accident with this woke and hilarious comedy from co-creator Jordan Peele (Get Out), about a drug dealer released from prison after 15 years trying to make his way in world that has changed radically. It’s a funny and often meaningful sitcom that goes places many shows, especially those on basic cable, shy away from.

4. Sharp Objects (HBO). Amy Adams plays a reporter who left her hometown, and the twisted upbringing that haunts her still, only to return decades later to pursue a story about a missing girl. In following leads, she unearths bizarre goings-on in the town, as well as in her own home. Adams is great, but it’s Patricia Clarkson as her manipulative mom who glues your eyes to the screen.

3. The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX). Darren Criss of Glee proved his acting chops in this latest miniseries from Ryan Murphy. Although Gianni Versace (played effectively by Edgar Ramirez) gets title treatment, it’s the story of his murderer, Andrew Cunanan (Criss), that propels the story, fed by the homophobia of the era and how Cunanan was as much a product of his time as a sociopathic fiend.

2. Queer Eye (Netflix). The reboot of this iconic makeover show ends up being less about lifestyle and grooming, and more about the emotional connections we form in coming to terms with our own humanity… Uh, wait… are we talking about a reality TV show?! Indeed. A new cast of Fab Five — more diverse, more emotive, more introspective — change the lives of a dozen-plus clients, and if you don’t find yourself crying at least twice an episode, you might want to seek counseling.

1. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Prime). It was a close call between first and second place on this list, but the scope of the writing, design and concept of this new series, from the creators of Gilmore Girls, put Mrs. Maisel over the top. Rachel Brosnahan plays a young Jewish mom and wife in late-1950s New York who finds herself divorced and unemployed, so delves into the world of standup comedy in the coffeehouses and Rathskellers of Greenwich Village. (One supporting character on the show? An up-and-coming, pre-junkie comic named Lenny Bruce.) It’s smart, laugh-filled and unique — and the series I most savored episode to episode in 2018.

Honorable mention: Pose (FX); Disenchantment (Netflix); Godless (Netflix); Barry (HBO); Killing Eve (BBC America); Nanette (Netflix); Castle Rock (Hulu); Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj (Netflix); Lost in Space (Netflix); Bodyguard (Netflix); 2 Dope Queens (HBO) .

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Hao Wu is an American-educated man from a traditional, unremarkable Chinese family. But as the sole male heir of his bloodline, he’s easily disrupted the normal course of family unity by being gay. His mom and dad, who still live in China, are OK with it, but the rest of his family (who don’t know his situation) still await for a daughter-in-law and, more importantly, his own son. But Hao can’t accommodate them… well, not entirely.

When Hao and his much more Westernized boyfriend Eric decide to have a child by surrogate, they expect mom and dad to be happy, especially since it’s a boy. But while dad beams at the prospect of becoming a grandfather and continuing his male lineage, mom is resolute in her prejudices: Being gay is one thing… but gays having children?!? Absolutely. Not. Her bigotry actually overcomes her believe in tradition.

Not that Hao cares too much. He and Eric are plowing ahead.

All in My Family, a 40-minutes documentary debuting Friday on Netflix, is a light-hearted work about serious themes: cultural, sexual, moral, reproductive. A charming and heartwarming portrait of shame, it threads the needle of being about people whose biases taint their opinions, but for whom we nevertheless share a great deal of affection. In that way, it’s something of an avatar for the Trump Era in general, where our political divisiveness had lead to acrimony and distance. Here, we see how people can disagree, but still come together.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

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A welcome homecoming: Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney reunite for a fourth time to tell more ‘Tales of the City’

4th iteration of Armistead Maupin’s ‘Tales of the City’ is a welcome reunion

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

We get all excited when a former long-running sitcoms like Will & Grace or Roseanne gets revived by the same network years later, but the television journey of Tales of the City is more amazing by half. Over four miniseries on three platforms (PBS, Showtime and now the streaming service Netflix) and 26 years, the loves, tragedies and antics of the residents of 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco have done more than just generate melodrama as a kind of queer Melrose Place. No, the collection of episodes has dramatically and sensitively chronicled the queer experience, from sexual liberation through the AIDS crisis into late middle age, as no other work has with such frank accessibility.

When the initial Tales of the City was broadcast on PBS in January of 1994, sodomy was still illegal, same-sex marriage was a laughable idea, and Will had not met Grace. Yet it featured full-frontal male nudity, gay men involved in leather and kink and drugs and annoymous sex, set in an era (1976) before anyone knew what AIDS was. It was both racy and innocent; it captured that lightning-in-a-bottle cultural moment when San Francisco represented a queer Camelot — a sexual utopia that simply could not be sustained.

We live in a new world now, so the idea of gay sex and nudity piped into our homes for mainstream consumption seems less radical, and the current 10-episode installment of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City has a slight been-there-done-that quality. But only a slight one. It addresses PrEP and sero-discordant relationships; gender fluidity and being openly trans; heteronormative constructs like having kids and getting married are part of the cultural wallpaper, even if not universally agreed upon.

Maupin’s stories have always trafficked in an air of mystery. The first two series especially conjured Hitchcock (especially Vertigo, which was set in San Francisco).

This one does the same — a gimmick that can seem a little soap operatic and cheesy, but the needle-threading of Tales has always been how it deftly skirts the razor’s edge of melodrama and saga.

There are some jarring disconnects between this iteration and its relationship to the prior ones. Though set in the present day, the timing doesn’t quite match up — everyone is about 15 years younger than they should be. (Over the four miniseries, the actors who portray Mouse — the acknowledged alter ego of author Armistead Maupin — have gotten progressively younger.)

But there’s also the presence of Olympia Dukakis as the magical Anna Madrigal (now 90 and all but beatified as Queer Queen Gaia) and Laura Linney as Mary Ann Singleton, the perpetually uncool-Midwesterner-turned-original-fag-hag. Mary Ann has returned to 28 Barbary Lane for Anna’s birthday and to visit Mouse (Murray Bartlett) and his new boy-toy Ben (Charlie Barnett); she incidentally reconnects with the adoptive daughter (Ellen Page) she abandoned 23 years earlier to pursue a career, and decides to stick around. The reunion of these amazing actresses (as well as the new ones, including Garcia as the confused trans man Jake) is reason enough to rejoice.

All 10 episodes will be available for streaming on June 7; I had access to all of them, but didn’t binge through them all in a frenzy. I’ve stretched them out, allowing an episode or two to simmer before moving on. I’m in no rush to get to the end. When you miss your friends, you want your final moments together to linger.

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Netflix will launch the fourth installment in the long-running Tales of the City franchise tomorrow — I reviewed it here — starting tomorrow. It’s just as well-done at the prior three, but if you aren’t familiar with the residents of Barbary Lane, there is a chance for you to catch up at least with its origins. Acorn TV streaming service is now offering the original 1994 PBS miniseries (also called Tales of the City) right now. If you’re a subscriber, you already have it, but if not, you can always try the free trial offer to catch up.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

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