For Jonathan Groff there are a lot of advantages to being openly gay in Hollywood. He talked his friend (and mine) editor, Kevin Sessums in his new issue of FourTwoNine magazine. Groff has been busy since the cancellation of Looking, the controversial HBO series about the lives of three gay friends in San Francisco.
“…it was less about the rejection, because as an actor you deal with rejection on a daily basis, and I’ve grown to have a handle on that kind of powerlessness of wanting something to happen that you can’t control. For me, the sadness was more based on our having found our stride in the second season and expanded our world. There were so many more stories to tell. San Francisco, where the series was set, is full of so many stories because it is so diverse and fascinating, and there were so many places yet to go. And I don’t want to let it go yet. I’m not ready to. I am grateful that we at least get to come back and put a little closure on the experience. Because I didn’t get to say goodbye to the experience when I heard the news.”
He talked about being gay in the biz and past relationships with Zachary Quinto and Gavin Creel saying that dating fellow actors is no more or less challenging than those in other industries;
“When I came out, I understood that maybe I wouldn’t be the male romantic lead in a Nicholas Sparks movie. And I’m okay with that. I love theater. I came to New York to be a theater actor. There are a lot of out gay theater actors. When I came out, I made peace with the fact that maybe I wouldn’t be a huge movie star or a huge TV star. But I’d rather be a working actor and not hiding anything in my personal life.
Weirdly, after I came out, I began to get a lot more film and television work. That’s all a way of saying that the reason I don’t mind talking about it over and over is because that is the way acceptance happens, and that’s the way you break down those walls. It’s what Harvey Milk said about coming out to all your friends. It’s important. And the more we talk about it, then the less we’ll finally have to talk about it. And for me personally, it feels liberating. I enjoy talking about it because I felt I couldn’t talk about it for so long.
I feel like in dating actors the nice thing about it is they understand the schedules involved or having to leave for three months to shoot something and all of that. But when I was dating Gavin and dating Zach, it was more about the people they were instead of the actors they were, which is the same about the people who aren’t actors that I’ve dated. It’s about them as people and not about any careers or jobs they have.”
This fall, Groff returns to Broadway in Hamilton. He’s rather blunt when it comes to Madonna, who reportedly texted throughout an off-Broadway performance of the show at the Public Theater. When Sessums asks if he was disappointed that the show’s composer Lin-Manuel Miranda barred the Madge from visiting the cast backstage, he said;
“No. Because that bitch was on her phone. You couldn’t miss it from the stage. It was a black void of the audience in front of us and her face there perfectly lit by the light of her iPhone through three-quarters of the show.
What was funny about it was that she was there that Saturday night, but at that Saturday matinee Michelle Obama was there. We were collecting for Broadway Cares after the show, and Mrs. Obama stayed in the audience while the Broadway Cares speech happened, and Lin called her out and the audience applauded for her. Then she came backstage and hugged every crew member—the wig girl, all the costume people, every cast member. She said to us—and this is a direct quote—
‘This is the greatest piece of art I’ve ever seen.’
It’s crazy. I’ve never been a part of a theatrical experience in which you have in the audience Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama and Bernadette Peters and Busta Rhymes and Black Thought and Jimmy Fallon and Dick Cheney . . .
KS: Wait. Dick Cheney? Did he come backstage?
JG: He didn’t come back.
For full FourTwoNine interview go here.
(Photos, Damon Barker for FourTwoNine)
The post #QuoteUnquote: Jonathan Groff on “Looking’s” Cancellation, Dating Gay Actors & “That Bitch” Madonna appeared first on World of Wonder.
