![]() ![]() She came up to me and just looked at me, and she goes, “I’m not going to tell her, because I have a feeling you’re going to be able to tell her yourself.” I turned around and said to her, “Before I go, please do me a favor and tell Winnie Holzman, this would have meant so much to me when I was 16 years old to see this guy on TV.” I walked to the door to leave, not knowing if I was going to come back or not. Mary looked at me like, “Thank you.” I started to well up. There wasn’t a lot in the pilot, because I didn’t say a lot. So when I walked in and met with Mary Goldberg, it felt really personal to me. I thought, “Boy, did you guys miss the mark on this one.” When I got there, there were three or four guys going for the same part, but they were wearing khakis and a polo. I put on these bright red Levi’s and a rainbow shirt. WC: I went in kind of dressed like Rickie. Did I ever tell you what happened in the audition room? WC: Honestly, I wasn’t really talking about it. I don’t think I really knew that you had been rejected by your parents. I don’t think I was able to know that from my vantage point at the time we worked together.ĬD: I knew you were gay, and I knew you had made this choice to come out, and you were still very raw from that. I don’t mean to compare our experiences actually because adolescence is something everybody has to go through, and of course it’s dark. She said everything that I wanted in my heart but didn’t have the means of articulating. Also, I had this language delivered to me by a brilliant writer. One, I didn’t have to go to school suddenly. I was so bad at it.ĬD: Some people are better than others. I felt bludgeoned, navigating my way through those social gymnastics. I had just gone through junior high school. That’s a very challenging age, especially for girls. I don’t think I’ve ever been in more pain in my life. I wonder if there were things that you felt that way about.ĬD: Oh, my gosh. ![]() When I look back on that whole experience, I think of my fictional world and my reality converging. Months later, I get this script where Rickie goes through a very similar thing. I remember we were with Winnie on our way to something, and I told her what had happened with my dad. WC: I lived on friends’ couches and in my car until we started filming the series. So that’s when I told my parents, and that’s when I was kicked out. I wanted people to know that I, as a gay man - a gay boy at the time - really put my stamp of approval to what we were doing. I had made a deal with myself that I would come out if the series went. I read it, and I had to decide whether or not I wanted to disclose to her. ![]() WC: My agent sent me the script, and she didn’t necessarily know that I was gay. and Devon Odessa had worked so much, and they were so savvy.ĬD: Jared had done a Noxzema commercial, so he was big time. For you, it was probably that much more heightened, because there hadn’t been a precedent. I remember having these conversations with you and thinking back, “Could she really comprehend what I was talking about?” But you did.ĬD: We were all kind of venturing forth into a big unknown. Wilson Cruz: I was 19 when we made the pilot. It was euphoric.” Here’s what they had to say about the groundbreaking series created by Winnie Holzman.Ĭlaire Danes: Wilson, can you remember what we did 25 years ago? I don’t know if I had done that before, gone out dancing for the sake of it. “I remember dancing with you to ‘Sweet Dreams,’” Danes tells Cruz. ![]() It feels like no time has passed between the two co-stars as Danes recalls one of her favorite episodes, set at an AIDS dance-a-thon. On a recent evening, Danes takes a break from shooting “ Homeland” in Morocco to chat with Cruz for Variety’s Pride Issue. And Cruz brought an LGBTQ character into living rooms before “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “Dawson’s Creek” did the same a few years later. As a true confidant to Claire Danes’ Angela, Rickie was both a TV trendsetter and a wonderfully ordinary teen. But Wilson Cruz changed that with his depiction of Rickie, a proudly rebellious high school sophomore who was a key member of Angela Chase’s social circle. When “ My So-Called Life” debuted in 1994, there weren’t many portraits of gay teenagers on television. ![]()
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