2011 Greggys: The Daytime Soap Star of the Year is Chandler Massey of NBC’s “Days of Our Lives”

Let’s face it, daytime soaps have rarely done its LGBT characters justice.

One Life to Live did for a brief, glorious time a few years back with Oliver and Kyle and Nick and As the World Turns gave us Luke, Noah and toward the end, the amazing Reid.

ATWT is now off the air as is All My Children which had the first same-sex wedding on a daytime soap between Bianca and Reese. AMC jettisoned the characters soon after the wedding. OLTL, which ends its run in a few weeks, quickly abandoned its entire gay storyline last year due to outside pressures.

So now we are left with Days of Our Lives. The show did well in introducing the gay character of Sonny (Freddie Smith) as a self-assured young man who has his sexuality figured out. It has done little with him after a promising beginning but more than made up for it with a developing storyline that has the character of Will Horton at the center of it.

Will is just beginning to come to the realization that he is gay and in the coming months, he will be walking a rocky road. We will be watching, riveted, because the young actor who plays Will, Chandler Massey, has done a brilliant job of making us care.

Whether he’s breaking up with his girlfriend, defending gay friend Sonny, confronting his mother or confiding in his grandmother, Will is the one you can’t keep your eyes off of. Massey is showing us so many layers to this character – especially in the past month – and it is a wonderful ride.

That’s why he is the winner of the 2011 Greggy for Soap Star of the Year following in the footsteps of last year’s winner Eric Sheffer Stephens who played Reid on ATWT.

There are so fewer actors playing LGBT roles in what is left of the soaps that there was a danger of this category not being presented this year. But Massey is a deserving winner and if he keeps up this level of acting, he will be the front-runner for next year’s prize as well as an Emmy nomination.

It’s also so nice to know that the actor playing Will is such a thoughtful and articulate young man off-screen. Chandler has shown up to support various LGBT causes and knows the importance of his character to viewers watching at home – especially LGBT kids and their parents.

Before returning to Georgia to spend the holidays with his family, Chandler filmed an anti-bullying Public Service Announcement for the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles: