When I was a kid, there were hardly any gay story lines or characters on television that I recall. Then when I was in college, 'Will & Grace' started up.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think every time there's a show like 'Modern Family' or 'Will & Grace' that portray gay and lesbian characters and is successful, it just further opens the door.
I remember on the pilot of 'Will and Grace' some executives from NBC saying to me, 'There are too many gay jokes.' I said, 'If not on this show, then what show?'
We didn't, with 'Will & Grace,' set out to change the gay world. We just set out to be funny.
I come from the New York theatre world, and I have a lot of gay male friends, so this friendship of Will and Grace's isn't such a stretch.
And I'd like to believe that's true, you know, kind of showing gay people in this kind of light and - where it's not about that, it's just about the characters for the first time, like those shows were.
I had played many gay characters before, but they were finite - guest characters in TV shows or characters in plays.
When I was a kid, Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell were mere blips on the gaydar; and they were both still in the closet.
I grew up in a conservative small town, and the gay characters I saw on TV and in movies when I was growing up were all flamboyant and obnoxious and sometimes kind of annoying.
When I started, there was more of a cultural assumption that many readers would find gay characters irrelevant or repugnant.
I kind of cheer the presence of any gay characters at all - I think the more we can saturate television with any gay character or lesbian character or transgender character, I think that's a really great thing. We're kind of getting past the fact that they're the punchline or that they're the novelty.
No opposing quotes found.