Gale Harold set to return to “Desperate Housewives”

Gale Harold is returning to Wisteria Lane.

The actor, who played gay just about as well as anyone ever has during five memorable seasons on Showtime’s Queer As Folk, was playing Teri Hatcher’s boyfriend on Desperate Housewives when he was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident six months ago.

Housewives creator Marc Cherry tells Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello that Gale is fully recovered and will return in the episode airing May 8.

“Quite frankly, I think he looks even better [than before the crash]” Cherry said with a laugh. “We were planning to end his story [around midseason] but because of the accident, we get to bring him back and have a nice full-circle journey for Susan in season 5.”

I spoke with Gale last summer and asked if he felt he had finally left Brian Kinney behind.

Here is a bit of our conversation.

Q. Do you feel like you’ve finally left Brian behind?
A. Brian behind? Is that a joke?
Q. it was such a great role. And you’re doing such different stuff now and I’m starting to look at you in a different way.
A. I’m glad that you say that. That’s kind of a baseline obstacle for an actor who comes from a place of obsurity then gets a big job and then they get associated with whatever that big job is. And when the job is really somewhat extreme then you worry. Everyone decides to get freaked out about typecasting at some point in their lives. But I really wasn’t…. If I was never anything other than what I did on that show then maybe I would be typecast but I think I have the ability to consider the world at large and approach it.””

At this point, some other “journalist” crashed our little chat and remarked that Brian Kinney “could have been straight or gay.” I loved Gale’s response: “No, I think he could never have been straight. I mean, the guy was absolutely homosexual. It was part of what was interesting about playing him. He was what he was. He was, essentially, an absolutely-realized gay man living with no boundaries.”

This same “journalist” then asked Gale about his Housewives character which he has already covered. So, he joked: “He’s a self-possessed gay man, out and proud.”