“Noah’s Arc” star Darryl Stephens is 35 today

We loved Darryl Stephens for two seasons on Noah’s Arc. It’s still a head-scratcher why Logo would cancel such a popular show, but last fall we did get a sense of closure with the wonderfully funny and sweet feature film Noah’s Arc:: Jumping the Broom. As he leaves Noah behind, Darryl has already shown in such films as Boy Culture and Not Just Another Gay Movie what a versatile actor he is.

I spoke with the birthday boy at last month’s NAACP Image Awards about the legacy of Noah’s Arc.

Writer-director “Patrick-Ian Polk was very deliberate in the image he wanted to present. He wasn’t giving you down-low brothers, he was giving you black gay men who were comfortable in their skin and who were living their lives responsibly and without shame,” Darryl said.

The actor is happy the movie is now out on DVD (Self-Promotion alert: A blurb from my rave review is on the DVD cover!) but disappointed that it did not get wider distribution  theatrically: “It was heartbreaking for a number of people because there was such a limited release in theaters and in the smaller cities like places in Ohio and the Midwest and the South, it didn’t come out anywhere. So I think they were excited to finally see it (on DVD). They really, really loved the movie.”

The movie, which features the marriage between Noah and Wade (Jensen Atwood) was released less than two weeks before the Nov. 4 election. Because of this timing, Darryl sees a real lost opportunity: “I hate to say this but I feel like if the film had played at the Magic Johnson Theater instead of the theater in West Hollywood, it might have had more of an impact on that vote. We’ve been so fixated on locating gay stories in West Hollywood and there’s so many other black people in California who need to be reached and in the U.S. Getting outside of those environments is what Prop. 8 showed us that we need to do.”

As far as the actor’s personal life goes, there was a time when he did not want to talk about being gay. But that has changed some and in an issue of Instinct magazine last year,  he talked about why he has chosen to be relatively low-key about his sexuality.

“I think people who don’t work in the industry don’t understand that actors really get one body and one face. And we kind of get one chance,” he said. “What the public sees is pretty much our entire livelihood. If you step up and say, ‘ I want you to see me, an actor who gets paid to be other people, as only this one type of person,’ it just doesn’t make sense – particularly to a young actor who is looking for work. What I was honestly doing at the beginning was biding my time and hoping that I would be allowed to play a variety of roles, so when the time came to answer the question I could say, ‘Yes I’m gay but I was able to play this and able to play that, and people believed it and responded to it.”

“I’m still private about my personal life but my being gay certainly does not have to be any big mystery or secret,” Darryl added. “I’m not ashamed of it, it’s not something I’m hiding.”