In the April issue of The Advocate, Sean Hayes finally came out of the closet officially. Sean never played the “no really, I love vadge” closet games, but he did steadfastly refuse to answer questions about his sexuality for many years, claiming that he didn’t want to limit his choices as an actor, or limit the audience’s view of him and the characters he could play. Sean did the Advocate interview as promotion for his role in the Broadway musical Promises, Promises, in which he plays the (hetero) romantic lead opposite Kristin Chenoweth. Well, Promises, Promises premiered, and this was enough to set off a Newsweek culture critic named Ramin Setoodeh – who is gay, HuffPo points out – on some kind of crazy tangent about gay actors playing it straight, and how much they suck at it. No pun intended? Eh. FYI: The full piece is here, I’m just going to edit down the relevant portions – and many are already calling this one of the most homophobic mainstream journalism pieces in a long time:

The reviews for the Broadway revival of Promises, Promises were negative enough, even though most of the critics ignored the real problem—the big pink elephant in the room. The leading man of this musical-romantic comedy is supposed to be a single advertising peon named Chuck who is madly in love with a co-worker (Kristin Chenoweth). When the play opened on Broadway in 1968, Jerry Orbach, an actor with enough macho swagger to later fuel years and years of Law and Order, was the star.

The revival hands the lead over to Sean Hayes, best known as the queeny Jack on Will & Grace. Hayes is among Hollywood’s best verbal slapstickers, but his sexual orientation is part of who he is, and also part of his charm. (The fact that he only came out of the closet just before Promises was another one of those Ricky Martin-duh moments.) But frankly, it’s weird seeing Hayes play straight. He comes off as wooden and insincere, like he’s trying to hide something, which of course he is. Even the play’s most hilarious scene, when Chuck tries to pick up a drunk woman at a bar, devolves into unintentional camp. Is it funny because of all the ’60s-era one-liners, or because the woman is so drunk (and clueless) that she agrees to go home with a guy we all know is gay?

[The] truth is, openly gay actors still have reason to be scared. While it’s OK for straight actors to play gay (as Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger did in Brokeback Mountain), it’s rare for someone to pull off the trick in reverse… Last year, Rupert Everett caused a ruckus when he told the Guardian that gay actors should stay in the closet. “The fact is,” he said, “that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the … film business.” Is he just bitter or honest? Maybe both.

Most actors would tell you that the biographical details of their lives are beside the point. Except when they’re not. As viewers, we are molded by a society obsessed with dissecting sexuality, starting with the locker-room torture in junior high school.

This is admittedly a complicated issue for the gay community, though it is not, in fact, a uniquely gay problem. In the 1950s, the idea of “color-blind casting” became a reality, and the result is that today there’s nothing to stop Denzel Washington from playing the Walter Matthau role in the remake of The Taking of the Pelham 1-2-3. Jack Nicholson, by the force of his charm, makes you forget how he’s entirely too old to win Helen Hunt’s heart in As Good As It Gets. For gay actors, why should sexual orientation limit a gay actor’s choice of roles? The fact is, an actor’s background does affect how we see his or her performance—which is why the Tom Hankses and Denzels of the world guard their privacy carefully.

It’s not just a problem for someone like Hayes, who even tips off your grandmother’s gaydar. For all the beefy bravado that Rock Hudson projects on-screen, Pillow Talk dissolves into a farce when you know the likes of his true bedmates. (Just rewatch the scene where he’s wading around in a bubble bath by himself.) Lesbian actresses might have it easier—since straight men think it’s OK for them to kiss a girl and like it—but how many of them can you name? Cynthia Nixon was married to a man when she originated Miranda on Sex and the City. Kelly McGillis was straight when she steamed up Top Gun’s sheets, and Anne Heche went back to dating men (including her Men in Trees costar). If an actor of the stature of George Clooney came out of the closet tomorrow, would we still accept him as a heterosexual leading man? It’s hard to say. Or maybe not. Doesn’t it mean something that no openly gay actor like that exists?

[From Newsweek]

Is this homophobic? I would say yes, probably. But my first thought – knowing that Setoodeh is gay – was that he’s a self-loathing gay dude trying to make a f-cked up point in a really twisted, horrible way. I think he’s throwing the word “queen” around to be light and funny, but I winced every time because it came across like gay-on-gay hate speech. It’s as if Setoodeh’s original piece was called “Sean Hayes: Too F-ggy, Even For This Queen”. In any case, this whole Newsweek situation got even more coverage because Hayes’s costar and friend and Kristin Chenoweth wrote an open letter on Broadway.com defending Sean. Her full piece is here, and here are the highlights:

As a longtime fan of Newsweek and as the actress currently starring opposite the incredibly talented (and sexy!) Sean Hayes in the Broadway revival of Promises, Promises, I was shocked on many levels to see Newsweek publishing Ramin Setoodeh’s horrendously homophobic “Straight Jacket,” which argues that gay actors are simply unfit to play straight. From where I stand, on stage, with Hayes, every night — I’ve observed nothing “wooden” or “weird” in his performance, nor have I noticed the seemingly unwieldy presence of a “pink elephant” in the Broadway Theater. (The Drama League, Outer Critics Circle and Tony members must have also missed that large animal when nominating Hayes’ performance for its highest honors this year.)

I’d normally keep silent on such matters and write such small-minded viewpoints off as perhaps a blip in common sense. But the offense I take to this article, and your decision to publish it, is not really even related to my profession or my work with Hayes or Jonathan Groff (also singled out in the article as too “queeny” to play “straight.”)

This article offends me because I am a human being, a woman and a Christian. For example, there was a time when Jewish actors had to change their names because anti-Semites thought no Jew could convincingly play Gentile. Setoodeh even goes so far as to justify his knee-jerk homophobic reaction to gay actors by accepting and endorsing that “as viewers, we are molded by a society obsessed with dissecting sexuality, starting with the locker room torture in junior high school.” Really? We want to maintain and proliferate the same kind of bullying that makes children cry and in some recent cases have even taken their own lives? That’s so sad, Newsweek! The examples he provides (what scientists call “selection bias”) to prove his “gays can’t play straight” hypothesis are sloppy in my opinion. Come on now!

[Thousands] of people have traveled from all over the world to enjoy Hayes’ performance and don’t seem to have one single issue with his sexuality! They have no problem buying him as a love-torn heterosexual man. Audiences aren’t giving a darn about who a person is sleeping with or his personal life. Give me a break! We’re actors first, whether we’re playing prostitutes, baseball players, or the Lion King. Audiences come to theater to go on a journey. It’s a character and it’s called acting, and I’d put Hayes and his brilliance up there with some of the greatest actors period.

Lastly, as someone who’s been proudly advocating for equal rights and supporting GLBT causes for as long as I can remember, I know how much it means to young people struggling with their sexuality to see out & proud actors like Sean Hayes, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris and Cynthia Nixon succeeding in their work without having to keep their sexuality a secret. No one needs to see a bigoted, factually inaccurate article that tells people who deviate from heterosexual norms that they can’t be open about who they are and still achieve their dreams. I am told on good authority that Mr. Setoodeh is a gay man himself and I would hope, as the author of this article, he would at least understand that. I encourage Newsweek to embrace stories which promote acceptance, love, unity and singing and dancing for all!

–Kristin Chenoweth

[From Chenowith’s open letter published in Broadway.com]

Ah, I love Kristin Chenoweth. I like that she identifies herself as a Christian and a GLBT advocate, and honestly, the GLBT community needs more people like her as their advocates and ambassadors to the “straight” world. As far as the larger argument about gay actors playing straight characters – I know there are some people who really care about it one way or the other, but when you’ve got a truly gifted actor, it really doesn’t matter. I absolutely hated Setoodeh’s example of Rock Hudson – have you ever gone back and watched one of those old Rock Hudson and Doris Day movies? They’re really good! They were two actors who had a lot of chemistry and love for each other, and you could tell how much fun they were having together in every single scene of their movies. And my guess is that it’s exactly the same for Kristin and Sean – who cares if he’s going home to his boyfriend? Does that mean he can’t have chemistry with another actor?

I remember, back in the day (circa 1999), reading an interview with Will & Grace’s Sean Hayes in which he came across as very snippy and obsessed with not answering anyone’s questions, ever. Which, you know, is fine in general. If you don’t want to speak to journalists, don’t. But don’t sign on to do a promotional tour and then act like a bitch. What’s interesting is that was pretty much the last interview I ever read with him – I think he learned that if he didn’t want to talk about anything personal, he should stop giving interviews completely.

Now, I always assumed Sean was gay, although he never confirmed it. And no, I didn’t assume he was gay because he played a gay character. I thought he was gay because he never had a girlfriend, because he seemed to hate being asked about anything personal, and he because, you know, he beeped (trademark: Jack McFarland). Anyhoodle, Sean is finally coming out of the closet, but he still doesn’t sound happy about it. Here are some excerpts from The Advocate interview (full piece here):

On his concerns about his looks: “I’m so f-cking fat right now. I’m not even kidding… You haven’t seen me naked.” And with a Jack McFarland–like, high-pitched flourish, he adds, “Yet!”

On breaking network’s television’s gay glass ceiling: Out characters had been so rare on network TV that the media seized on two points: “Jack is too gay!” and “Will isn’t gay enough!” To Hayes, it was all unfair and inaccurate: “The [press] wrote, ‘The flamboyantly feminine over-the-top gay guy Jack…’ But if you didn’t apply ‘gay’ to Jack, he would just be the crazy next-door neighbor who had girls in the revolving [door].” Suddenly everyone wanted to know if Hayes himself was gay and how he felt about playing a gay character. Faced with the very real prospect of jeopardizing his chance at landing straight roles down the road, he started reciting stock answers, variations on what he told the Detroit Free Press early on: “When I play a gay character I want to be as believable as possible. And when I’m playing a straight character I also want to be as believable as possible. So the less that people know about my personal life, the more believable I can be as a character.” And Hayes never pretended to be something he wasn’t; he never walked some pretty woman down the red carpet or faked a straight relationship.

On all of the awards for playing Jack: “The first time I sat down at the Golden Globes, I looked at all these people—Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, I mean everybody was there—and the first thing I thought was, I can’t believe we’re all so lucky.”

On being typecast as the flaming homosexual: “This town’ll do that to you,” he complains. “It’ll just keep you in that box until you have no choice but to be the thing that they want you to be. There were like 50 commercials where I was the husband or the nerdy boy or whatever, and then I became famous for playing this gay guy,” he says. “It’s funny. But that’s how it goes. It’s not up to you. None of this is up to anybody. It’s what the suits decide for you. I was so naive to think that someone from a network actually cared about me personally. I was like, But they’re so nice!”

On not “coming out” while Will & Grace was on the air: “I never have had a problem saying who I am,” he states. “I am who I am. I was never in, as they say. Never. I believe that nobody owes anything to anybody… You are your authentic self to whom and when you choose to be, and if you don’t know somebody, then why would you explain to them how you live your life? I feel like I’ve contributed monumentally to the success of the gay movement in America, and if anyone wants to argue that, I’m open to it. You’re welcome, Advocate.

On criticism that he should have come out long ago: “Why would you go down that path with somebody who’s done so much to contribute to the gay community?” he asks. “That was my beef about it. What more do you want me to do? Do you want me to stand on a float? And then what? It’s never enough. That’s the thing about celebrity: It sets you up to fail because the expectation is so high of what’s needed, what’s wanted from you that the second you don’t [meet it], you disappoint people.”

On his life post-Will & Grace: “I was anxious to get back to my life before Will & Grace,” he says. “You do need that time to find who you are again. Who am I without this? With fame you can’t help but lose yourself. You want to be the one who says I’ll always remain the same, but it is humanly impossible to disallow fame to change you.”

On going back to television in the future: “Doing a sitcom, it’s a machine, it’s a factory. There’s nothing creative about it for an actor. There’s nothing new I’m going to discover for a character in episode 185. It’s just a pure punch-in, punch-out factory day job—and it’s a wonderful factory day job—but creatively it’s stifling.”

Does he still hang out with Will & Grace people? “Every day. Every day we sleep togeth­er, every day, we live in the same house,” he says with manic enthusiasm. “We’re just like the cast of Friends. We all love each other and we all get along, America. Everybody can sleep now!” Then he calms down and gives a serious, if brief, answer: “I do love all those guys and I do miss them very much. I talk to Megan a lot and I e-mail with Deb and Eric sometimes.”

And does he have a boyfriend? “I spend time with a special someone in my life,” he says. But after years of being burned, he won’t say another word about him or the quiet life they lead. “That’s it. That’s all I need,” he says. “I don’t need events. I don’t do a lot. I live my life like an 85-year-old man. I’m just quiet. It’s fantastic.”

[From The Advocate]

I always loved Sean for his incredible comedic gifts, for what he brought to the Jack character, and I always hoped Sean would break out in a bigger way, branching out into more television and film projects after Will & Grace. Since it went off the air, he has gotten some film and television work, but nothing that has been career-altering. I think he pretty much sat down for this interview to promote his Broadway debut in Promises, Promises, which is the musical version of Billy Wilder’s classic (and amazing) film The Apartment, originally starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Good luck to Sean!

The Advocate cover courtesy of CoverAwards.

Two years after the end of somewhat groundbreaking NBC comedy Will and Grace, the two obnoxious sidekick characters, Karen Walker and Jack McFarland, may get their own spin off show, according to the National Enquirer. Actor Sean Hayes was said to be interested in a spinoff back in 2006, but nasal-voiced Megan Mullally was focusing on her own talk show at the time. When Megan’s talkshow got canceled early last year, the show became a possibility for her again. The two pitched “Karen and Jack” to NBC and a pilot is in the works. It is thought that it could come out in the fall of 2009.

A new show is in the planning stages that would reunite the quirky duo, the Enquirer has learned.

Sean, 38, who played flamingly gay Jack Mcfarland, and Megan, who was the wacky-but-witty alcoholic Karen Walker on the the hit NBC series until it went off the air two years ago, met Sept. 20 at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles to discuss their new project. The show would be called “Karen & Jack”…

They went to NBC to pitch the idea and a pilot is currently being written, says the insider…

If everything works out, the series could be in NBC’s fall lineup next year.

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, October 13, 2008]

Jack and Karen were the best characters in that show and it would be a great idea to set them up with their own show. The Enquirer points out that it’s a risk, though. Look at that Friends spin-off, Joey. That was pretty much DOA.

They’re outstanding actors who bring a lot of personality and heart to their work. Will and Grace was a successful sitcom and ran for eight seasons. Both won awards for their performances on the show, with Mullally earning two Emmys and two SAG Awards and Hayes winning one Emmy and seven consecutive nominations for best supporting actor. A quick glance at IMDB shows that Mullally has done mostly telvision work since the series wrapped, along with voicing a character in Bee Movie – the bee who gave tours of the honey factory. (It’s hard to miss her voice.) Hayes was featured as Jack Nicholson’s character’s assistant in The Bucket List and has also done television work in the last two years. It seems like they’re open to reprising their Will and Grace characters and they certainly have plenty of fans who would love to see them together again on the small screen.