In discussing his coming out journey,
actor Dan Bucatinsky called the process “a bitch; and awesome; and
awful.”
Bucatinsky is best known for playing
James Novak on the ABC hit series Scandal, a recurring role
which won him an Emmy Award.
In 2001, Bucatinsky wrote and starred
in the gay romantic comedy All Over the Guy.
Speaking last week at SAG-AFTRA's
Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Town Hall, Bucatinsky said
that despite having been “twirling in tutus to the soundtrack of
Fame since age 3” the thought of coming out in Hollywood
terrified him.
“The notion of being 'out' in public,
even before anyone in the public knew or cared who I was, [was]
unfathomable,” he told the audience.
When his then boyfriend, now his
husband, invited him to a dinner party with Michelle Pfeiffer,
Bucatinsky said he worried that it could ruin his career.
“Do I go to dinner and support my new
boyfriend and meet an iconic movie star and possibly risk whatever
professional fallout comes from being an actor who is outed?”
He did go and was relieved when
Pfeiffer didn't pay him much attention.
“'Whew,' I thought. 'I could
probably still work with her and she'll never remember,'” he said.
Even in promoting All
Over the Guy, Bucatinsky said he convinced himself that the
film would “cross-over to a straight audience as long as I didn't
push some kind of 'gay agenda.'”
“I had written a role for myself as a
gay man looking for love and honesty and intimacy. And by exposing
the simple truths about characters who ‘just happen to be gay,’ I
too was exposing myself. It scared me; I wasn’t ready for it. But
sometimes, you need to be pushed off the diving board before you can
show the world that you know how to swim. What had I been fighting
so hard for in the end? The way to reach my most authentic self on
screen, in my writing and in my personal life, was to be honest.”
“But if anyone had told me back in
1992 that one day I’d be married to a man and have two kids and
also play some guy’s TV husband on a show that launched around the
time the first black President of the United States spoke out in
favor of marriage equality, I would have sworn pigs were flying.”
He concluded: “So, here we are: it’s
2014 and I’m gay and out, and pigs are flying. Now can someone get
me an address for Michelle Pfeiffer ‘cause I want to send her my
book. Thank you very, very much.” (The video is embedded on this
page. Visit
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