Gale Harold, who played bad boy Brian
Kinney on Showtime's groundbreaking gay drama Queer as
Folk, says he was terrified of taking on the role.
Harold talks about his experience
playing gay on the show in a new interview with gay
glossy Metro Source.
“I was terrified of taking on this
sort of sexual/political stance,” Harold said. “There's always,
in my mind, this hesitancy to speak as Gale Harold about the life of
this man, Brian Kinney, that I'm playing and how that relates to
society and the gay community at large.”
Queer as Folk,
which followed the lives of five gay men and a lesbian couple living
in Pittsburgh, went off the air in 2005 after five seasons.
The
show was based on the British series of the same name created by
Russell T. Davies. Queer as Folk
ran for two seasons in the U.K.
“The
legacy of the show was having all these people come up to us over the
years and thank us for giving them characters to watch and to relate
to. They saw themselves. That's kind of overwhelming to hear that.
It's very meaningful, and it's heartbreaking, and it's inspiring, but
... it was a heavy and awesome responsibility and I wanted to get it
right.”