'Will & Grace' Helped Build Acceptance for Gay Characters - Variety

Contents:

• HOW WILL & GRACE PAVED THE WAY FOR GAY CHARACTERS ON TV
• WILL AND GRACE STAR CONFIRMS HE’S GAY
• WILL & GRACE BROKE GROUND FOR GAY REPRENTATN—CAN IT DO IT AGA?
• GAY CHARACTERS
• HOW ‘WILL & GRACE’S’ RELATABLE VIBE HELPED AUDIENC ACCEPT GAY CHARACTERS

HOW WILL & GRACE PAVED THE WAY FOR GAY CHARACTERS ON TV

But for others, the characters fall short—Jack, particular, whose hilar high mp persona has been cricized as a sort of gay mstrelsy some circl. Bee once Will and Jack kicked open TV's closet, there was no lookg NBC ma the cisn to add -creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick's bawdy ltle edy, the ultimate unrequed love story between terr signer Grace Adler (Debra Msg) and her nrotic gay lawyer BFF Will (Eric McCormack), to s stable of programmg 1998, there were no real gay characters on TV to speak of.

Prr to that, there had been a smatterg of gay characters a handful of seri, though they were always a supportg role—and often they befell some great tragedy while any realistic pictn of a love life was avoid at all sts. The characters were GINOs—Gay Name Only—and ually only when me time to die of when Will & Grace h the air, fally there were two gay men who did not pretend to be anythg other.

WILL AND GRACE STAR CONFIRMS HE’S GAY

And bee show bs is, above all else, jt that—a bs—work executiv were quickly realizg that puttg gay characters ont and center wasn't ratgs suici.

A year after the show premiered, the first "romantic" kiss between two gay characters would take place on Dawson's Creek. Yup, he's gay real life, too.

The rolutely private actor recently gave his first terview to gay newsmagaze The Advote after many nied requts.

WILL & GRACE BROKE GROUND FOR GAY REPRENTATN—CAN IT DO IT AGA?

You're gonna shoot the gay guy down? The star of the popular, Emmy-wng gay s adds, "I feel like I've ntributed monumentally to the succs of the gay movement Ameri, and if anyone wants to argue that, I’m open to . In 2012, former Vice Print Joe Bin ced the NBC s Will and Grace as a reason for Ameri's "evolvg" attu on homosexualy 2012: "I thk Will and Grace probably did more to te the Amerin public than almost anybody has ever done so far.

Broadst televisn the early 2000s was a powerful form of reprentatn wh work UPN and s Ain-Amerin geared programmg, diverse soaps like telenovela adaptatn Ugly Betty, and y, ss like Will and show, starrg a gay man and his straight female roommate, at least partially managed to te straight people on the ia that there's more than one type of gay person—albe rich, whe, affluent on. There was Jack, the flamboyant one most people assumed gay men to be; then there was Eric McCormack's Will Tman, the mundane, everyman that tght straight people their next-door neighbor uld be gay. Will's portrayal has gone on to be the blueprt for most gay men on televisn sce then, whereas Jack is somehow seen as negative, and regrsive.

Was he a gay mstrel show? I've e to realize that Karen Walker was the te gay in of Will & Grace. As portrayed by Megan Mullally, Karen was the boozy, outspoken bch of the NBC s, often ed as a gay male surrogate the way that the women of Sex and the Cy uld often be.

GAY CHARACTERS

Much has been ballyhooed about whether Jack's feme, theatre-lovg, melodramatic portrayal did a disservice to gay men as the one mastream reprentatn on televisn. It's as much looked down upon the gay muny to be "femme" as is the straight muny.

The stereotyp are nstantly nonted by seri like RuPl's Drag Race and films like Moonlight, but there are still gay men who prefer to date a "mascule" man, one who do not project to the world like a Bat signal that he's a homosexual.

HOW ‘WILL & GRACE’S’ RELATABLE VIBE HELPED AUDIENC ACCEPT GAY CHARACTERS

In that rpect, Jack is a fantastic portrayal of a gay man.

If Karen were a gay man, would have been a tly revolutnary portrayal and one of the first steps towards fantastilly three-dimensnal characters like T on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Lafayette on Te Blood.