Back when Will & Grace was on the air, many were puzzled by the fact that Sean Hayes refused to say whether he was gay or not, despite the fact it was fairly well known that he was and he was playing the most outrageous gay character in TV. A similar thing occurred during the early days of Ugly Betty, as Michael Urie may have been playing an openly gay and rather camp personal assistant, but he was keeping pretty quiet about his own sexuality.
He’s now been talking about the reason for that with Frontiers magazine, saying that when the show debuted in 2006, “This was before Neil Patrick Harris had come out. Even though I was playing an openly gay character, we thought we might want to keep the mystery of what I do behind closed doors.”
He has absolutely no regrets about coming out, which he did towards the end of Ugly Betty’s run when he added the line ‘a member of the LGBT community’ to the website. He adds, “For me, coming out has only aided my career. It might not be good for everyone, but I have gotten to play so many wonderful roles. If I at any point decide not to play gay characters anymore, I would work a lot less. To me, it’s way better to have jobs and get great parts. I got to do [gay roles] in The Temperamentals and Angels in America, and now Buyer and Cellar.”
There are still issues to face though, not least that openly gay actors may face difficulty landing straight roles. “Unfortunately, I think coming out is still something actors known for certain kinds of roles have to think about,” Urie Says, “Audiences sometimes have a better sense of suspension of disbelief than people making the casting decisions do, though I can’t blame them for not taking big risks. Will & Grace, Ugly Betty and Modern Family have helped progress the gay rights movement, and those wouldn’t have been possible without gay people in show business.”
Urie was talking to Frontiers ahead of his one-man-show’s West Coast debut in LA at the Mark Taper Forum, where it runs until August 17th.
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