Reflections from Jonathan Slavin and Doug Spearman on being openly gay actors in Hollywood

I’m so glad that Jonathan Slavin was part of the Coming Out In Hollywood panel last weekend at Outfest.

He didn’t go along with the conventional wisdom that being openly gay is a career killer for an actor who wants to play romantic leads in movies and challenged people to turn this on its head: “At a certain point, you have to just cast (gay actors) and grab the reins and move forward and see what happens. It is about taking risks and taking risks and not waiting until it’s safe. We’re accommodating a narrow-minded mentality.”

Gay executives, gay directors and gay casting people are among those accommodating that mentality and making it true. Good for Jonathan for calling them out on it and for challenging them to do better!

The actor is best known for his portrayal of neurotic Byron Togler on the Fox network’s sitcom Andy Richter Controls the Universe and most recently played scientist Phil Myman on the now-canceled ABC comedy Better Off Ted.

I was very moved by Jonathan’s story about why he feels it’s so important for him and other gay actors to be out:

“I grew up in a very small, very conservative town in Pennsylvania … I so didn’t want to be gay and I thought I was the only person … I thought for sure that I would never, ever tell anyone that I was gay because if anybody found out about me, it would be the end of the world.”

“I read an article in People Magazine that I had snuck out of my mom’s room – because little boys didn’t read People – and Terry Sweeney was on Saturday Night Live and had done an article where he talked about his husband and the feeling that I had reading that article [was] that maybe I’m not the only one, maybe there’s a world beyond this, I can’t even put words to it. So if I happened to get a job on television and somebody asked me a question, I wanted to make sure that if some little gay kid … picks up that magazine and feels like they’re the only person, that I can take a piece of that away.”

Actor Doug Spearman, best known for his role of professor Chance Counter on the Noah’sArc TV series and feature film, was also on the panel and shared with the audience the moment he knew that he could never be in the closet:

“I was living in LA in the early 90s and was walking through Ralph’s on Wilshire Boulevard and The National Enquirer had a picture of Chad Allen in a hot tub,” remembered Spearman (pictured with Meredith Baxter at Outfest).  “He was on Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman at the time and was like 17 or 18 years old. It was this big nasty headline because someone had gone to a party and sold this picture of him kissing his boyfriend in a hot tub. I remember I looked at this picture and I thought: “That’s never going to happen to me. I’m never going to let someone take that kind of control of my life.”

Slavin recalls a slight regression on his part during his first season 0n Andy Richter. He was advised to not be as open about his private life (he’s been in a relationship for 16 years) and said he’d never been so uncomfortable in his life.

So it’s been 100 percent out and proud ever since and he is in the perfect position to assess exactly where things stand as far as openly gay actors getting cast in television and movies: “People do say, ‘You were great but we didn’t see casting a gay guy for this role.’ It’s just thrown around; it’s sort of the last thing that people can throw at you. Sitting here at a gay film festival, I do find it interesting that in other communities, when black people write a black film about a black experience, they automatically create jobs for black actors.

But the same is not true in our community; we write gay films and cast straight people to portray us. I think that our own internalized homophobia, this cult of masculinity that many people in our community worship, we want to see ourselves portrayed by dreamy, hot straight people and that’s not always the most accurate representation. I do think politically that it’s an odd issue.”

Related posts: Openly gay director Don Roos still working out his feelings about gay actors in straight lead roles and vice-versa *** Meredith Baxter on coming out: “I had a couple of very uncomfortable days … and after that, it has been fine.”