Out actor Darryl Stephens said in a
recent interview that he nearly quit acting before landing a
recurring role on the CBS comedy B Positive.
During a recent appearance on the
LGBTQ&A podcast, Stephens talked about how Noah's Arc
dealt with HIV and discussed fatherhood.
Stephens starred as Noah Nicholson, a
screenwriter, on the Logo drama Noah's Arc. The show centered
on Noah and the lives of his gay friends living in Los Angeles. It
ran for two seasons in the early 2000s.
When asked about how the show dealt
with HIV, Stephens said that not dealing with the issue would be a
“huge disservice to our people.” The show helped normalize
conversations about HIV, he said.
Stephens, 47, said that when he was 22,
he was terrified of HIV.
“I'm certainly not carrying the
terror that I was carrying when I was 22 and there was no hope in
sight,” he
said. “I will definitely say that there was a point when I was
probably afraid to have sex. And then there was a point where I was
no longer afraid to have sex.”
Stephens also discussed how his
starring role as Noah in Noah's Arc nearly derailed his acting
career.
“[R]ight before I got B Positive,
the show I'm on now on CBS, I decided, 'OK, I'm going to be a dad
now. I'm going to do something else. If I can't do anything but
remind people of the show Noah's Arc from 2005, then maybe
I'll do something else,'” he said.
“And then interestingly enough, when
we decided to have the kid, work picked up,” he said. “I just
felt like, 'OK, well maybe that was a little bit of a rash decision
to take your hands off or maybe that was exactly the right decision.
Take the pressure off yourself.”
Stephens said that his daughter is
nearly a year old.