Comedian-actor Billy Crystal, who
played a gay character on Soap, has described some of today's
gay television scenes as “pushing it.”
“Sometimes I think, 'Ah that's too
much for me,'” Crystal said during a TCA panel discussing his
upcoming show The Comedians, which premieres in April on
cabler FX.
“It was very difficult at the time,”
Crystal
said of playing Jodie Dallas on the ABC comedy Soap in
late 70s. “Jodie was really the first recurring [gay] character on
network television and it was a different time, it was 1977. So,
yeah, it was awkward. It was tough.”
While Crystal said that he sometimes
wanted to ask nervous audiences, “What is your problem?” he
revealed that some of today's gay storylines don't sit well with him.
“Sometimes, it's just pushing it a
little too far for my taste and I'm not going to reveal to you which
ones they are,” he said.
One of those programs could be the ABC
legal drama How to Get Away with Murder, which has not shied
away from showing gay and straight characters in graphic sex scenes.