Sam Pancake chats with The Advocate: “I knew fairly young that it was Burt Reynolds for me and not Suzanne Somers”

I’m always looking forward to seeing who Brandon Voss is going to talk to next for Advocate.com and his latest interview is with the always busy actor Sam Pancake who has done memorable guest spots on many TV comedies and was a cast member on the short-lived gems Lovespring International and Kitchen Confidential.

Her currently stars In Pretty, a mockumentary Web series on PrettyTheSeries.com and FunnyOrDie.com Sam plays a dim-witted pageant dad named Michael Champagne who has a precocious 5-year-old daughter (played by adult actress Stace McQueen).

Here are a few excerpts from the interview:

Tell me about Michael Champagne, the pageant dad you play in Pretty. We know from the first episode that he loves everything Disney — including Zac Efron.
He really loves sparkle, glitter, and glitz, but according to Steve — and I don’t know how this will play with your gay magazine — Michael is supposedly straight. We find out later that he and his wife do have sex, even though she’s cheating on him with his brother. If he is gay, he’s in deep denial or doesn’t have the self-awareness to understand that he’s gay. He’s a Christian, he’s a little bit racist, and he’s not very smart. In the second episode he says, “I’m a doer; I try not to think,” which I think sums up everything about him. We’ve chosen to make him from southern West Virginia, as am I. He moved to L.A. to make it as an actor, but that didn’t work out. Now he’s delighted to be entering his daughter in pageants because, you know, it’s what she really wants.

What was your experience growing up gay in Romney, W.Va.?
I knew fairly young that it was Burt Reynolds for me and not Suzanne Somers. I also knew everyone around me would not be cool with it, so I tried to keep that under wraps as much as possible, but I just couldn’t. I was a pretty theatrical, high-strung little boy, so anyone with half a mind could figure out why I loved the show tunes and wasn’t so great at basketball. My mom was always trying to butch me up, telling me not to say certain words, but my stage debut was ironically in the Romney Women’s Club Minstrel Show, where I had to dress up as Minnie Pearl and do numbers from Hee Haw. Like Michael Champagne, I wanted to be around sparkly things like Hollywood.