GREG IN HOLLYWOOD

celebs! hugging! greg!

LATEST

GREG YOUR WAY

Take the feed! Subscribe

Get GIH news via Twitter

Follow Greg: Twitter Facebook

Greg on Flickr:

My chat with Kevin Rankin who portrays a gay paramedic on NBC’s new medical drama “Trauma”

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/07gO7lr3qKfBH/610x.jpg

NBC did terribly in terms of LGBT representation according to the recent report issued by GLAAD. But the network, which has a gay cop character on its drama Southland, adds a gay paramedic to its roster in the new fall series Trauma about a group of first-responder paramedics.

AfterElton.com reported exclusively from the Television Critics Association Tour Wednesday morning the news about the gay paramedic. I later spoke with Kevin Rankin, the actor who plays the paramedic named Tyler Briggs.

The series is set in San Francisco and the audience will find out pretty early in the season that Tyler is gay.

“This is something that will come out in episode five,” Rankin explained. “It’s actually the Halloween episode so we have the whole San Francisco Halloween gay parade going on and I come out to my partner on the show who is played Derek Luke. That just actually just adds another layer to what’s going on because he’s a religious guy on the show and that just adds another thing for him to deal with.”

Rankin will look familiar to some viewers from his recurring role of Herc on Friday Night Lights which, for a time, he juggled with a recurring role on NBC’s short-lived remake of Bionic Woman.

Trauma makes his first time as an official series regular since the old WB series My Guide to Becoming a Rock Star back in 2002. But he’s been in demand doing multi-episode arcs on Six Feet Under, Undeclared, State of Mind and Grey’s Anatomy as well as single guest shots on such hit shows as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Law & Order, NCIS, Lost and In Plain Sight.

He has no qualms about playing a gay character on Trauma.

“I’ve played a gay character twice,” he explained. “I’ve played transgender. I was excited to take on the responsibility of not playing a stereotype, not making it a deviant thing. I am excited to shoulder that responsibility – very excited.”

“My character Tyler is more of a peripheral character right now,” he added. “He’s going to be a mystery or a little while. It could be awhile before we go home with him. I’m excited to see where it goes.”

http://www.zap2it.com/media/photo/2009-05/46701422.jpg

FILE UNDER: Television

Comments

(All comments are reviewed before being published, and I review submissions several times per day.)

One Remark

  1. I have some insight on Trauma being filmed in San Francisco. They shut down the King Street exit for part of a weekend to do an explosive car crash scene. This was all created by less than a gallon of gasoline.

    I learned of this from Fernando and Greg via SF’s Energy 92.7. They interviewed someone from the film commission’s office.

Leave a Reply