We're not gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
No, of course not.
-It's fine if that's who you are. -Absolutely.
-I have many gay friends. -My father's gay.
Building off the coded humor of the 1980s,
sitcoms of the 1990s began to tackle LGBTQ issues more directly.
Fran, I'm gay!
Oh, thank God!
The Fox sitcom Roc
featured one of television's first same-sex weddings,
when the lead character's uncle got married to his boyfriend.
There's an evolution that we can track.
It starts in television,
with characters and stories where you open the door
and in walks a gay character.
Nothing makes God happier than when two people,
any two people, come together in love.
Trans representation in the '90s
remained confined to guest star appearances.
And stories were filled with tropes about the trans experience,
including trauma and shock reveals.
I've had a sex change.
There was this kind of humiliation that was assigned
to anyone who wasn't clearly masculine or clearly feminine, like "It's Pat."
-Age? -Thirty.
-Height? -Five-eight.
Sex?
Yes, please.
But up until the late 1990s,
every out character on a television series
was still a supporting character.
And you're gay?
Well, except for one night in college when I was drunk.
They no longer don't exist.
They exist in that world,
but they are clearly on the fringe of that world.
You know, we'd had supporting characters, we had guest stars.
But it was never completely about the gay person's life.
Audiences were still waiting for an LGBTQ lead character,
but all that changed in 1997
when a sitcom star decided to come out publicly
and told her story on ABC's 20/20.
Imagine the most difficult and personal decision
you have ever had to make in your life
becoming the hot topic of debate in newspapers, magazines and television.
That's exactly what happened to popular comedian Ellen DeGeneres,
who next week will make television history
and finds herself at the center of a storm of controversy.
The bottom line is, I am the manager, and you make coffee. Understood?
-Did that seem bossy? -No, it was good.
-Okay. -It was good.
Ellen was the girl next door.
She was zany and funny, and she could make anything more hilarious than it was.
The show was fine as it was,
but really good sitcoms go under--
under a certain level, and they start really getting into a character.
I just want you to be happy.
You know, it's possible to be happy without a man.
Must you joke about everything?
I wasn't the girl on a sitcom that had boyfriends
and was looking for the right guy.
It just didn't work out, and that wasn't who I was,
even though we put guys on there, and I had dating scenes.
And even Disney and ABC were trying to figure out
what would make my character more compelling and how we could keep going.
I had gone to a kind of, like, hippie retreat.
You could take drumming, you could take pottery,
you could take different kind of psychological courses,
and mine that I chose
was changing the inner dialogue of your subconscious mind,
and-- Drumming was full.
I was doing all this meditation
and deep soul-searching
about the shame that I was carrying because I was gay,
and I thought if anyone knew that I would lose my career,
and they wouldn't like me anymore.
I cried a lot,
and I realized how heavy that shame was that I was carrying around.
At the end of that week,
I called the executive producers over to my house,
and I told them that I wanted to come out.
And I remember thinking,
"Oh, my God. This is amazing."
And in the same breath, I'm thinking,
"This could be the end of the show."
We had to meet with Disney.
She had to state her case.
And they said no.
I had many meetings with Disney saying, "This is my career,
and, you know, if it fails, you can cancel me and do another show.
But it's my life."
So it was begging them to do it.
And after she poured her whole heart out, they finally said, "Okay."
I remember walking back to our offices,
and she was just crying and crying and crying.
She was so relieved.
But looking back on it, that was just the beginning.
We called it "The Puppy Episode",
because a Disney executive said I should have a boyfriend on the show.
They said, "We're not gonna get her a boyfriend. It doesn't work."
And he goes, "Well, then get her a puppy."
So we kind of mocked that whole ridiculous phrase
of "get her a puppy" and called it "The Puppy Episode."
Disney was so worried that this was going to leak out
that everything had to be incredibly secretive.
So much so that all the pages were printed on crimson red paper.
You could hardly read it.
The truth being that it was not xerox-able.
You didn't xerox it, but in truth, it did end up leaking out.
And it started kind of a... shitstorm.
Is America ready for a television homosexual character?
-...sitcom history. -Coming out of the closet.
-...may make or break the show. -...the lesbian.
Rumor about your character on Ellen.
Ellen Morgan coming out of the closet. Anything you want to say about that?
I think it's gotten out of hand.
What happened is we were talking about adding a character to the show.
And his name was gonna be Les Bian. And...
She was having a lot of fun, teasing it along,
and the audience went crazy laughing.
We do find out that the character is Lebanese.
-Lebanese? -Yeah, yeah.
-And-- -Just out of the blue?
No, there have been clues.
You've seen her eating baba ghanoush if you've watched the show.
Maybe I'm Lebanese.
-You could be Lebanese. -I could be Lebanese myself.
-I didn't know that. -That's odd.
'Cause I pick up sometimes that you might be Lebanese.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
But as it got closer and closer, you started realizing...
"This is really big.
This is historic."
Two weeks before "The Puppy Episode" aired,
Ellen DeGeneres came out herself,
appearing on the cover of Time magazine
and on a Diane Sawyer special.
When was the last time you had a moment's doubt,
wondering if it were the right thing?
You know what? I made the decision during the summer...
that I wasn't gonna live my life as a lie anymore.
It became bigger than any of us ever anticipated.
Nobody knew it was gonna be what it was.
And it was great for about five minutes.
We had protesters.
People wanted to shut it down. There were death threats.
We were shooting a show. It was not even the episode yet.
It was like, "Let's get everybody out.
Get Ellen out of here. There's a bomb threat. Now."
But we were gonna do this episode come hell or high water.
All right. Roll sound.
Ellen, are you coming out or not?
Yeah, Ellen, quit jerking us around and come out already!
We didn't want her to be ahead of the audience.
We wanted the audience to be ahead of her.
What is the big deal? I've got a whole hour.
They were waiting. They were waiting and waiting.
They had no idea when we were gonna say it, how we were gonna do it.
The casting snowballed.
k.d. lang, of course.
Melissa Etheridge.
Then we got Billy Bob Thornton. Then we got Demi Moore.
And Ellen's mother was in the airport scene.
And then, of course, Laura Dern graced us...
with a great performance.
I don't date men.
Why?
I'm gay.
You're gay?
Wow. I thought you knew.
-No, didn't know. -Yeah.
In fact, I thought you were gay too.
Laura was a dream come true.
She was great and a rock for me when I was emotional and scared.
You thought I was gay?
Oh, wow. I'm sorry.
I just kind of got that vibe.
"Vibe"? Like a gay vibe?
And Oprah.
We couldn't have asked for a better person to play a therapist than Oprah.
So that's basically it.
No major problems, nothing pressing.
What kind of vibe do you get from me?
Oprah is the queen of everything and everyone.
I thought it would validate the, you know, the seriousness of the show.
'Cause I wanted it to be funny, but I also wanted people
to pay attention to it for so many different reasons.
Has there ever been anyone you felt you clicked with?
And what was his name?
Susan.
Oprah being there, for us as black people, was a big deal.
That was more of a big deal for me than actually Ellen coming out,
was the fact that there was a black person in the space...
cosigning.
I thought it was so brave of her
and so artistically brave of her to use television
as a platform for speaking her own truth
in a way that the whole world would be instantly aware.
So I wanted to be a part of that.
I knew that it would be impactful for the world. And it was.
This is so hard,
but I-- I think I've realized... that I am...
I can't even say the word.
The best part about this episode
was that Ellen was so vulnerable.
Why can't I say the word? I mean, why can't I just say...
Every single time during rehearsal, I would cry.
Because, you know, it was the first time that I was saying I'm gay.
I'm so afraid to tell people. I mean, I just...
Susan, I'm gay.
Viewing parties from coast to coast drew huge enthusiastic crowds.
In Birmingham, Alabama,
where the local ABC station chose not to air Ellen,
over 3,000 people watched the satellite broadcast
and partied with pride.
Forty-two million people watched the coming out episode.
It was one of the biggest ratings bonanza that ABC had ever seen.
They couldn't believe it, but there was tremendous backlash.
People were boycotting Disney.
A lot of advertisers were dropping out.
Wendy's, Chrysler.
They did not want to be a part of this. They were getting such pressure.
You've got one percent of the population, max, is lesbian.
Two percent, max, is homosexual.
So you've got 97% of the American people that don't buy into this thing.
If you have Disney stock, sell it.
If you see a Mickey Mouse shirt, buy a T-shirt that's something else.
If they can't hear from us on this, they'll never hear from us,
and if we can't stand up on this, the church is over!
It was a scary time.
I was getting death threats,
and a lot of scary things were happening at the same time.
It was very exciting, you know, freeing my soul
and my just being exactly who I was for the first time in my life,
and then I was getting all this hate.
At Harpo Studios, we had to take...
the switchboard operators off the switchboard.
We literally shut it down,
because the level of vitriol and threats
and "Go back to Africa"
for acting in "The Puppy Episode,"
was like nothing I had ever experienced.
We prayed that the people who were her fans,
who loved her, who loved the show, would stick with us.
But in the fifth season, ABC put a parental advisory on the show.
Ellen wasn't happy about that.
I really like you.
And I really like you too. I just--
The character came out. That's not a bad thing, okay?
What happened though is a successful sitcom was on the air,
and then all of a sudden the lead character
became a totally different thing to the audience.
Everybody wanted you to be funny and like the gay uncle
that they had, maybe, in their family,
but nobody actually wanted to hear about your sexual exploits.
She couldn't continue ratings-wise.
The ratings went down, and it was finally canceled.
I remember her show getting canned,
and she was on the cover of magazines, "Yep, I'm gay,"
and then all of a sudden, she was just nowhere to be seen.
She was ostracized for being truthful about her life.
Being open.
Having a hit show and being a moneymaker for a studio,
I was important to them.
And then suddenly I was poison to them.
And so you're sitting at home going, "Damn. They did this to Ellen?"
Like, "They love Ellen. What the hell are they gonna do to me?"
There was a lot of closet doors closing after Ellen.
Just a few months after the Ellen cancellation,
in Laramie, Wyoming, news broke about a brutal hate crime
against a young gay man named Matthew Shepard.
Good morning, everybody. A terrible turn in a terrible story.
It's really tragic and so disturbing, Ann.
Matthew Shepard was beaten last weekend, tied to a wooden fence by two men
who met Shepard in a bar in Laramie, Wyoming.
Eighteen hours later, a passing bicyclist summoned help
after almost mistaking Shepard's bloodied body for a scarecrow.
When Matthew Shepard happened, people went to their televisions.
You couldn't help but watch it on the news and be moved by it.
News organizations had no other choice but to cover it
because it was such a horrific event.
I hope that in the grief of this moment for Matthew Shepard's family
that Congress will pass the hate crimes legislation.
I am so... pissed off.
It just hit me why I am so devastated by it.
It's because this is what I was trying to stop.
This is exactly why I did what I did.
You had all these currents, all these things going on.
And so it was, "Wow, we're on this high about Ellen,"
and then her show gets canceled.
Wow, we're on this high, and then, you know, there's Matthew Shepard.
We were almost there.
And it made people sit up and pay attention.
At the same time the LGBTQ community
was grieving the murder of Matthew Shepard,
NBC was quietly premiering a new sitcom on Monday nights.
We were told to write a love story for NBC,
because Mad About You was going off the air.
We wrote a love story to replace that television show.
The characters that were at the center of the show
were a straight couple living in San Francisco,
and they had neighbors, and their name was Will and Grace.
Max and David came into my office,
and they pitched an ensemble series.
And then kind of over here in the corner was the Will and Grace relationship.
My instinct was, "Stop.
Let's look at the relationship between a gay man and a straight girl."
But it's a different love story.
-I love you. -Love you.
My bosses at the time said,
"Advertisers won't embrace it. This is a waste of time."
And I said, "If the material's not good,
then we never have to have this fight again.
But if it is good, we might make something that...
separates itself... from all the other sitcoms that are out there."
We knew the second we tried to teach the audience
anything about this subject, we were gonna be in trouble.
FYI, folks, most people that meet me do not know that I am gay.
So as a result, we actively stayed in this space of,
"We are writing a television show
to entertain as many people as we can once a week."
Jack, blind and deaf people know you're gay.
In the pilot episode of Will & Grace, they're at this bar.
She's in a wedding dress, and they have this moment where they say, like,
"Wouldn't it be great if we could just be together
because we're so close?"
Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!
I remember watching it with a lot of weight,
thinking, "Oh, no. Is he now gonna be with her
and this is what this show is about?"
Kiss! Kiss!
Nothing? Anything?
Sorry. No, it's...
And I remember feeling very relieved and like, "Oof.
Okay, great."
The same thing happened with Will & Grace that happened with Friends.
It didn't become a hit until the summer after the first season.
The core cast, those four actors, were so strong together.
They delivered on our hopes and our expectations.
They over-delivered. And the audience just followed suit.
My first true "Holy shit, I'm watching someone gay on television"
was watching Will & Grace.
Especially in seeing Will and Jack.
It was the first time that I had seen that be embraced.
Why do you have to be so mean?
Because you love it. And I love you.
And you love gel.
What that did for me as a teenager,
my whole family would watch the show, 'cause it was so funny.
That was the show that was the catalyst to get me to come out to them.
I can't take it anymore! This man is straight!
I think Jack is the straight one!
I have never been accused of something so heinous!
Heinous.
At the height of "Must See TV,"
75 million Americans were watching at least some of Thursday night.
That was, back then, a third of the country.
Will & Grace was the shit. There's no question about it.
It became the show that everybody wanted to be a part of.
What's sex with a man like?
-I've loved it ever since-- -It's good, actually.
Will & Grace featured over 100 celebrity guest stars
during its eight-season run.
Can you do this?
Say something "lesbianic."
Home Depot.
Is this bitch for real?
Mr. Takei, would you sign my doll?
Bitch, get out of here! You spilled my Skittles!
A very distinct and specific part
about the technique of writing TV
is having an awareness that you are gonna be inside a person's living room,
and it's gonna be beamed to them when they're in a very intimate space.
Jack, you are more yourself than anyone else I have ever known.
This is different. My mother will fall apart.
And because of that,
we always wrote the show thinking about our parents.
I want you to know who I am because I'm proud of who I am.
Mom... Are you wearing Chloé?
Jack.
Mom, I'm gay.
We just wanted them to say, "Okay, we get it, and we love you."
And that was the way we wrote every episode.
You could never disappoint me.
I just want you to be happy.
Looking back on it, there have been clues.
Granted, there were not as many African American people on that show,
but there was still a minority on that show,
which was the LGBT community, like Sean Hayes.
And, well, he was the one that really turned their whole show out,
and he was just so open.
And when I saw him doing that, I was like, "Okay.
Well, I definitely have a different experience than him,
but... if he can do it, I can do it."
Will & Grace was such a big, popular, accessible show,
and so many people watched it, even if they weren't LGBTQ.
And even though I didn't necessarily directly relate to it,
I enjoyed having this kind of, like, queer identity on-screen.
When I took the job...
I had no intention of educating anybody about being gay.
I only took it because I was an actor who needed a job.
I didn't realize until after it was over,
after those eight seasons, and a few years after that even,
"Oh, wow. That really had an effect on people."
And what an amazing thing to be a part of.
It was probably the biggest blessing of my entire life.
We promised each other
that we were never going to make anything a social commentary.
And then I heard Vice President Biden say...
I think Will & Grace probably did more to educate the American public
than almost anything anybody's ever done so far.
And I spit out my mini quiche.
I mean, I could not believe
what I just heard the vice president of the United States say,
and the rest is "herstory."
In the summer of 2000,
as Will & Grace was about to enter its third season,
an unlikely hit emerged
that changed the television landscape.
Thirty-nine days, 16 people, one survivor.
Survivor. I thought that show was so incredibly breakthrough.
I loved the casting of Richard Hatch.
If Survivor had been scripted,
I don't think they would have written this gay Machiavellian character.
It would have never got through the network process.
Catching fish makes people happy, but that's not why they're voting me here.
They're not voting me off because I'm not letting them.
The winner of the first Survivor competition is...
Rich.
Congratulations, Rich.
Survivor's finale
became the highest-rated episode of television that year
with over 51 million viewers.
Richard Hatch, an out gay man, took home the game's million-dollar prize.
Richard Hatch on Survivor, which was the biggest show at that time,
and he was a bad guy on that show.
And it was so nice to see a gay character that didn't have to be perfect.
Survivor's success inspired a surge in reality programming,
which created more platforms for LGBTQ visibility
on mainstream television than ever before.
Reality television ended up being an important part
of the coming-out process in this country.
Because it is one thing to have gay characters.
It is another thing to have gay people
playing themselves, living their own lives, doing something unscripted.
As reality television gained popularity,
one of the networks that emerged as a leader in the format was Bravo.
When I went to Bravo,
there was already a huge gay thing happening there.
They had a show called Gay Weddings
before gay marriage was even legal, which is wild to think about.
They had the first gay dating show called Boy Meets Boy.
And, of course, Queer Eye had just begun.
And around 2002,
one of my producers at Ralph Lauren who booked our photo shoots said,
"I heard about this show, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It's on Bravo."
I was like, "What's that? A nonstick cooking spray?"
I was like, "Do you even have dental insurance?" Which they didn't.
But I took a leap of faith and quit my job
and started doing Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
You know, you are suffering from the post-collegiate T-shirt syndrome.
-I just-- I never-- -PCTS.
There was definitely conversations about, "Is the name too strong?"
And I distinctly remember
one of the producers writing a letter to the network saying,
"No, it must be 'Queer Eye.'
It's about reclaiming that word 'queer'
and making it a celebratory word instead of a slur."
When we started to see the word "queer" in titles of shows in mainstream TV,
it took the power back from that word
and shifted it, reframed it to mean something new,
to mean something fabulous.
Something that you should want to be a part of.
I can't overestimate the importance of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
when it premiered.
You had these five gay guys who were on the show
because they were each great at something.
They were experts in their field,
and they were actually making the lives of a straight guy better.
There was a station in Oklahoma
that refused to air Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
because it was just too out there.
And instead they were airing old episodes of Coach.
Now, I love Craig T. Nelson as much as the next guy,
but I was just trying to get people out of pleated khakis and mullets.
Did anyone tell you how to tie a proper tie?
No, never had anybody teach me.
They used to make it on themselves and...
-Slap it on ya? -...slap it on me.
You're a man now. Figure it out.
Queer Eye, what's really beautiful about it
is that it's really about fathering.
The presence of male caring that we are so devoid of in our culture.
It's like, "Let's gently show them what male care is all about,"
and I think that's what makes it really beautiful.
Seeing the last three minutes of any of those episodes,
when you see, week after week, a heterosexual male in tears...
Oh, be happy.
...thanking this group of gay guys for what they've brought to his life,
that was a huge cultural shift.
That had never ever happened.
I mean, it was beyond acceptance. It was immersion.
Television is a very intimate medium.
It's unlike a movie
where you're watching it with a hundred other people in a theater.
You're in people's living rooms, you're in people's bedrooms.
And these were the George W. Bush years,
not particularly progressive politically,
and there was a moment at a White House Correspondents' dinner
where President George W. Bush said...
And I'm sorry Secretary Rumsfeld's not here either.
The guy constantly surprises me.
Do you know what Rummy's favorite TV show is?
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
During the Bush-Cheney years, every election seemed to be about
how gay people were going to destroy your life.
I'm not for gay marriage.
I think marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman.
It's your obligation as an artist
to react to the environment that you're seeing.
I think what was sort of happening was there was a lot of storytellers
who finally had an opportunity to tell their stories,
and it felt like we had this shot.
As LGBTQ visibility on television increased
in what Vanity Fair called "TV's Gay Heat Wave,"
new opportunities arose behind the camera for LGBTQ writers and creators.
The writers come into the room, and there are so many stories.
It's like they're opening a whole cupboard now
full of stories that had never been opened before,
like Alan Ball, and just watching what he was doing on Six Feet Under.
My favorite show growing up that was not a comedy or SNL was Six Feet Under.
The character of David who is out and gay
was such a good example of he's out of the closet,
and that, like, messy, after out of the closet time.
Do you fucking even think about how I might be feeling?
Not if you don't tell me!
You could notice!
You could give a fuck for once in your life
about somebody besides yourself!
And there's Ryan Murphy, who I knew and had grown up with early in the business.
The show Popular by Ryan Murphy.
I was obsessed.
I was obsessed with the characters of Nicole Julian and Mary Cherry
'cause they were so campy and bitchy.
Oh, my God. Are those to die for?
-No one should die for a pair of shoes. -Hush!
I would read these recaps in this forum called Television Without Pity,
and the recapper was like,
"The only people that watch this are gay guys and women."
And I was like, "And me! Oh, wait."
That big moment where I was like, "Oh, I, like, might be gay.
Anyways, moving on."
Ryan was doing Popular when I was doing Dawson's Creek.
We were always talking about battles you were having with executives
to put this on or that on.
And Kevin Williamson, the creator, said,
"I'm gonna make one of these new characters gay."
-You are not gay. -Yes, I am!
You know it!
He was the quarterback of the football team.
Just a very stereotypical straight white guy.
So that was a huge moment.
I remember watching and being like, "Oh, a gay character."
I was so closeted, and I grew up in a really conservative...
family and household.
So I don't know what I was looking for. I was like, "There's someone like me."
This morning, I told my father that I was gay.
It would cut to Katie Holmes, and I'd go dead-eyed.
Then he'd come back on the screen, and I'd pay attention.
At the end of that second season, the network and the studio asked
would I take over the reins of running the show at the time?
I said I would do it if they would let the character have
a gay kiss with another high school teenager.
There.
At the time, there were comedy kisses between characters on shows.
Like two men having a very close friendship--
-And then... -We're not doing anything!
The network didn't want me to shoot it in a close-up.
They wanted me to shoot it in a wide shot from across the street.
And I said, "We're getting the close-up of the kiss."
-Jack. -Hey.
Hey.
What are you doing here?
Aw, hell. This.
I remember when that kiss was aired on TV.
I sat with six of my friends in one of our tiny studio apartments
and watched it happen.
The same rules apply.
"How can we make an episode that people want to watch?"
But inside of all of that is someone's truth,
and those are the best episodes of TV.
And I knew how important a character like that would have been to me.
The increasing number of LGBTQ writers and creators
presented TV audiences with LGBTQ story lines
told from a different perspective.
I was a senior in high school at a college party,
and I had just done a drink off of an ice luge,
and then in the room that I walked past
of this kind of house of college students,
Queer as Folk was playing on the television.
It was almost like seeing an orgy.
But there's nothing more visceral watching that show
than that first moment of, like... people at a club.
It was like--
And there was someone in underwear dancing.
And it was incredibly exciting to me and incredibly scary to me.
The New York Times reviewed Queer as Folk and said,
"Where is the Grace character,
the straight character who takes us into this world?"
And we said, "There isn't one. It's about gay people."
We told the network, "We would like to do this show,
but this show is going to be a celebration of being gay."
This is not a bunch of guilt-ridden or shamed gay people
who are suffering or dying.
This is not gonna be that kind of show.
Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman,
the LGBTQ creators who also wrote An Early Frost,
adapted the hit UK series Queer as Folk for American audiences on Showtime.
When I got the script, I read it, and I thought I could play the part.
I wanted to play the part.
And I was excited about the idea that it would be made.
But I remember thinking,
"If this actually gets made as it was written on the page"...
-Coming in? -Huh?
..."then it's going to be like nothing people have seen before."
Shut the door.
My mentor, whose name was Calvin Mason, he was openly gay,
an incredible, incredible advocate for me.
I would never be here or have the career that I do without him in my story.
He had helped me get in the door, he saw it all happening,
and then the contract showed up with a 20-page nudity rider.
And his exact words were, "Peter, we all know you're going to happen.
I am concerned that if you do this show,
I can't take you over to ABC,
'cause they will say, 'I just saw this dude getting ass-fucked on Showtime.'"
And I was like, "That's a good point."
But my ultimate conclusion was,
"It may be the end of my career as an actor,
but I want to be able to say I was a part of it."
At the time, there were still 14 states that had sodomy laws on the books.
Queer as Folk was the first show that showed us...
having sex.
That showed us fully expressing who we were.
Television has a power
to normalize something that people don't understand.
Queer as Folk focused on the issues that were specific to gay people.
And one of them is the animus
that is held for anyone who's gay.
Which is the reason the scenes of Brian and Justin at the prom
felt so liberating.
There was a bit of showing off. "I'm gonna take you to your dance."
"If anybody's got any problems, they can talk to me about it later."
Well, the reality of the circumstances come screaming home
in a way that is so far beyond any expectation.
Justin!
The violence expressed in the show
reached its crescendo in the final season at Babylon,
which was the nightclub that was at the heart of the show.
It didn't feel like it was a surprise.
It felt like, "Yeah, this is something that could happen."
Some folks say, "That show is a little bit dated."
And yet LGBT violence
is very much a part of the world that we're living in now,
and it couldn't be more... current.
I firmly believe
that television is a weapon to be wielded very thoughtfully.
You know, now the main gay...
political website in China...
is called queerasfolk.cn.
Somebody took all the DVDs,
subtitled them in Mandarin, and put them up online for free.
And it became this phenomenon.
It became this, you know, clustering place for people,
and it's a flash point in their story.
I mean, they finally have an open LGBT movement now.
My favorite thing I've ever said about Queer as Folk is,
"They came for the queer. They stayed for the folk."
And I think that that's really profoundly true about what television does
at this moment in time in our cultural narrative.
Recognizing the growing power of LGBTQ content,
a television channel called Logo launched in 2005.
The channel was created specifically for LGBTQ audiences.
I think Logo is very much a part of the gay revolution.
And Noah's Arc, I think, was really the beginning.
I don't think anyone else was willing to take a risk like that on a show like that.
I grew up on these amazing sitcoms that featured four really great women,
starting with The Golden Girls,
then Designing Women, and eventually Sex and the City.
And so I thought, "I want to see a show like this but about us."
-Noah? -That became Noah's Arc.
-Wassup, boy? -These are my best friends in the world.
So I had these archetypes
loosely based on what I had seen on these other shows about women.
And then I wanted to break down those stereotypes
to tell the stories of a bunch of different kinds of black gay men
and how they were all looking for love and experiencing love in different ways.
The character Noah was sensitive and emotional...
in ways that often black folks would refer to him as a sissy,
but that's not who he was in the show.
He was the romantic lead. He was the hero.
What up, dawg?
Wassup, Noah?
As much as I love the idea of that character,
it took me a while to figure out, "How do you play that character?"
We've never seen that guy on TV before.
No, dawg, you can't be kissing on me like that. We boys.
Okay, I get it. Very funny.
This is what you want, isn't it? A homeboy.
A road dawg.
Certainly not a boyfriend.
I think we showed the world, particularly black and queer men of color,
that they could be fierce and fabulous and not apologize for it.
It's taken me a lifetime to get comfortable in my own skin.
If you're embarrassed to be seen with the real me, then that's on you.
But this is me, Wade. Take it or leave it.
Oh, man, Noah's Arc was huge.
Huge. Especially in the African American community.
It was a very long time before I felt that there was any gay representation at all
for a person of color.
And we live in a world where white people have to do it first.
How about a toast?
-Will & Grace. -To Will and Grace's baby!
Love that show.
But still waiting.
For people of color to be on that show for real.
The first time that I actually remember seeing any kind of representation
was Will & Grace.
It's very entertaining.
It's great to see LGBTQ characters on TV,
but that's not necessarily me.
"You be not judged one more time.
Judge not that you be not judged."
Amen.
On the show, there is this conversation about
how are you gonna go back to this church that doesn't accept you for who you are?
A lot of people in the African American community,
the church was so important and is so important.
To deal with the struggles, to deal with racism,
that safe space of community was the black church.
So when your minister starts talking
and starts putting down people who are gay or lesbian or bisexual,
it just makes you feel like...
"Where's my safe space?"
To what do I owe the pleasure?
Reverend Allen, I want to talk to you about...
my wedding.
With Noah's Arc, I wanted to address
the experience of holding to your religious conviction
and being true to your sexuality at the same time.
Now, who's the lucky bride?
I am.
And the idea that you do have gay men
who are very religious and live very honest, open lives.
It's really important to have queer characters of color
interacting with other queer characters of color.
Because there's a different dynamic when it's more than one of us,
and we share this language and this love that doesn't always translate
when it's the one black guy with his white boyfriend in this one show.
A lot of that was used in the language on Noah's Arc.
-What happened? -Did you do it?
Yes, I did it.
You let him get your booginas?
Yes, Alex, I let him get my boogina.
Obviously, gay men speak differently, you know.
In many ways, we create our own language,
and so it was cool to introduce terms like,
if I can say this, "boogina."
Girl, guess what Noah just told me.
It was important to have an authenticity.
We live in an era now where everyone is saying,
"Yas queen" and "slay" and all these terms
but somehow have been sort of co-opted now,
and there's no real connection to the origin.
And where's the queen?
The queen has entered the ball!
Oh, yas! Yas!
We're still living in an era where black gay characters don't get their due.
Noah's Arc had a very specific dynamic.
I would say it was black male sisterhood.
-I'm sorry. Am I intruding? -No, why don't you join us?
I was surprised to find that a big part of the Noah's Arc audience
ended up being black women.
Because it was like clicking the TV and all of a sudden
something you've never seen before pops up on your TV.
Even today, you couldn't make that show today.
Logo, you have to give them credit for it, 'cause they put it out there.
I remember watching Noah's Arc with a gay black male friend of mine,
but I'll never forget that experience,
because for the first time, he saw himself on television.
And for us, it was this crazy thing
that we never even knew we needed, and we never even thought was possible.
And I don't even realize that had a real impact on me.
I didn't know it until years later on Master of None.
Ma?
I'm gay.
Like, without Noah's Arc, there is no Thanksgiving episode.
That I would then be making television for people that looked like me
from a female perspective.
You can be lesbian if you want to, but when you come up in here,
you gonna respect my house.
Growing up with me, it wasn't--
There wasn't any representation of lesbians.
Not that I can remember.
There weren't lesbian shows, but in my mind, they were lesbians.
Like Charlie's Angels.
Kate Jackson's character, Sabrina. I'm pretty sure she was a lesbian.
When I watched it, she was a lesbian.
Kate Jackson's character.
Probably.
She's gay. She knows it. Hi, Kate.
She was the one who I could see, like,
coming over and re-grouting your tub for you.
Alice from The Brady Bunch. Lesbian.
Alice for sure was gay.
When the floor gets wet, it's slippery.
I don't know why we were housekeepers.
I guess it's a good thing that we're, you know, neat.
Don't buy that Sam shit. That was supposed to be her "boyfriend."
Sam "the butcher."
Sam, a nosegay is just what I need.
Right now, I got the gayest nose in town.
Nope. Lesbian.
There seemed to be a gay vibe about Gilligan's Island too.
Especially the people on it.
Mary Ann. Lesbian.
She didn't want anything to do with Gilligan.
She would bake something to get attention. That was it.
You know, lesbians, we'll feed you. We'll feed you.
Mary Ann, she was kind of tomboyish.
But I liked Gilligan. I really did.
Maybe I wasn't gay then. Or maybe he was feminine.
I don't know why, but I was attracted to Gilligan.
Maybe he was more of a butch lesbian.
Annual performance evaluations. Mary Beth Lacey.
Cagney & Lacey.
I don't know if they, like, consciously
are trying to target the lesbian audience, but you just can't help it.
"Brusque." I've never been brusque in my life!
Cagney and Lacey, both of them.
Yeah, the lesbian duo.
They solved stuff, they fixed things. Come on.
No!
That's what lesbians do.
Get down!
I care... about you... Christine Cagney.
Xena: Princess Warrior.
Big lesbian.
Probably the number one picture that you would see all over lesbian bars,
all over pool tables, you would just see lots and lots of Lucy Lawless.
And her sidekick was so in love with her.
She wanted her bad. Yeah.
Here, now I'll do your back.
Then there was Night Court.
Roz was very...
Just that dry sense of humor, straightforward, tough.
Christine, it's nothing personal. I just can't stand being around you.
Total lesbian.
And Marsha Warfield? Turns out she's a lesbian. I was right.
Roz was just--
Her sexuality was whatever you want it to be.
It's really funny how we're all searching for that.
We're all searching for somebody
so that we have somebody that we can go, "That's like I am.
That's me."
But after Ellen, TV execs could no longer ignore lesbian viewers,
and Buffy the Vampire Slayer developed a relationship
for a supporting character, Willow, that lasted two and a half seasons,
the longest lesbian relationship on TV at the time.
I don't need to be snuggled.
Vixen.
But it wasn't until 2004, when Showtime premiered a new drama,
The L Word, that lesbian lead characters became the focus of their own show.
Who gets to say what passes as art and what is obscenity?
My character, Bette Porter, is a gallerist.
And so I was doing a lot of research into what it meant to be a gallerist,
and no research as to what it meant to be a lesbian.
And I'm ovulating.
Let's make a baby.
I thought, "The lesbian part, that's just gotta be about love at the end of the day.
So I've got that covered."
But I had no sense, truly, in any kind of visceral way,
of the otherness that that might entail
until I was making The L Word.
What was so revolutionary about The L Word,
it was the sex.
I think lesbians watched it just to say,
"Let me see what I'm supposed to be doing."
You know. "Make sure I'm doing it right."
'Cause it was like the first time that we actually got to see
hot women having sex.
I don't even know what happened in the show.
I would skip it, fast-forward.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Here we go. Hot women having sex.
It wasn't about this voyeuristic thing where these dudes say, "Can I watch?"
It was not like that.
It was like we could exist outside of the male gaze.
'Cause in a guy's hand,
pizza guy would have showed up somewhere in there.
"Oh, hey, ladies."
The L Word came to me because I socially knew
the woman who created it, Ilene Chaiken.
And she asked if I wanted to play a part on it.
-Mrs. Peabody, I'm-- -Call me Peggy.
I don't like "Mrs." It's so frumpy, like I'm an old mare.
Peggy Peabody was a very cultivated woman, an arrogant woman.
Who the hell are you?
But in a funny and a light way. In an affectionate way.
I was a lesbian in 1974.
Just 1974?
Just 1974.
That was all I needed.
Well, you know, that is what we refer to as a... "has-bian."
"Has-bian."
And I just loved the wit of it, and I loved the relaxation of it.
That, to me, is how life should be.
The first time I really watched the show, I went to Ilene's house,
and we watched a few episodes in a row.
And when we stopped watching,
it was so odd to go back into the world,
which was not dominated by lesbians.
It was really odd.
Like you got used to that paradigm,
this not only female-centric paradigm but this lesbian-centric paradigm,
and that felt right.
I was doing an interview with Deborah Norville,
and before she was going to show a clip where Bette Porter kisses another woman,
she warned the audience.
Now's the time to tell the little guys to go and get a snack,
because you might not want them to see the clip that we're about to show.
What'd your husband say about scenes like that?
What's so interesting is that,
to me, if that were a heterosexual love scene,
you wouldn't have to say to the audience,
you know, "Send the children in for a snack."
I don't think that you would, or would you?
I think it depends on...
To her credit, she had the conversation with me. She didn't shut it down.
A kiss like that between a man and a woman...
-Is no big thing. -...we've seen it a lot.
-Right. -That's really the big difference.
-Not everybody has seen a kiss like that. -Right. It's interesting.
Because in the end of the day, it's about love and how you show love,
and to me that's so much healthier
than some of the things that we see on television.
Attention was being paid. That's the main thing, I think.
Attention was being paid.
It was just so great for lesbians
to see themselves reflected in a real variety of ways.
I watched that show all the time.
There weren't enough black people on that show. Otherwise it was great.
I learned what kind of lesbian I was when I was watching The L Word.
I went through every one of those characters. I'm like,
"I'm a bit like that, I'm a bit like that, but I like that.
I agree she's sexy."
There were so many appealing, interesting characters
who were all very different and who were all gay.
And so broad numbers of people could see themselves represented.
You know, once balls get rolling, they roll faster and faster,
and progress is, for a very, very long time,
a slow, incremental climb, but at some point,
things gather momentum and then really soar.
Despite advances in gay and lesbian visibility
in the early 2000s,
TV's depictions of bisexuality were still primarily underdeveloped.
For so long, bisexual characters were used in a deceitful way
or in a manipulative way.
In 1988, in the midst of the AIDS crisis,
NBC broadcast an episode of Midnight Caller,
featuring a bisexual man
who intentionally exposed men and women to HIV.
The episode was protested by ACT UP and GLAAD.
Bisexual tropes were usually to serve some sort of story line plot twist.
Remember the night I came up to you two at the bar,
I said, "Are you two together?"
Yeah. I told you we weren't.
It was more shock value.
Well, she wasn't the one I was after, Tony.
It wasn't about them as a person, it wasn't about their lived experience.
And in the '90s, if you look at the episode from Roseanne
or L.A. Law, they all had these kisses during sweeps week
to create marketing and buzz,
and using LGBTQ story lines to further their business agenda.
On L.A. Law, although the character C.J. Lamb
dated both men and women,
the term "bisexual" was never used to describe her.
-I like men. -So do I.
Oh. Then-- You mean, you're...
Flexible?
I see.
I don't really see images of bisexuality as being out there as much, you know?
It's usually bisexuality is almost a word that's used as a cover
to say like, "Oh, I don't really want to admit that I'm gay."
I'm not even sure bisexuality exists.
I think it's just a layover on the way to gay town.
So often in television, the bisexual as a girl
is either like, "Ooh, she's bisexual. That's hot."
Like it's a party trick she's doing or something like that.
And for guys, bisexuality is often like,
"He's gay. He's just not comfortable enough to say it yet."
There's no such thing as "bi." You just haven't come out yet.
How can I be gay if I love fooling around with your sister?
Yeah.
Why is bisexuality hard to label?
Or harder for people to accept than being gay?
-Are you saying that... -I'm not gay.
-What are you saying? -I'm not...
strictly heterosexual either, it seems.
In 1992, top-rated sitcom Roseanne broke new ground
when out bisexual actor Sandra Bernhard
played bisexual character Nancy Bartlett.
I thought you were our little gay friend.
You just don't get how it works.
Please don't label me. I am a people person.
Sandra Bernhard, she was, like, so forceful and so funny
and so strong and so unafraid.
-Do you even know Madonna? -Yes, I do know Madonna.
And I know Sean Penn.
And I've been with both of them. At the same time.
And the fact that she took this outrageous and very wild identity,
like you wanted to be her.
-I'm glad to be here. -Nice to see you. Thank you for coming.
-Thank you. -We'll be right back.
In 2006, Sara Ramirez was cast on Grey's Anatomy
as Dr. Callie Torres.
She was on the show for 11 seasons,
television's longest-running bisexual character.
It was very difficult to see myself anywhere in television.
And I know that there are a lot of
queer-identifying women of color who identify as bisexual
and want to be seen and want to feel respected.
So I feel that Callie being a sexually realized character
on Grey's Anatomy was very important.
Callie was a three-dimensional, full woman who was bisexual,
and it wasn't as though she was on her way to being gay.
She was truly bisexual.
So I'm bisexual. So what?
It's a thing, and it's real.
I mean, it's called LGBTQ for a reason.
There's a B in there, and it doesn't mean "badass."
Okay, it kinda does. But it also means bi.
Sara continues to be a voice pushing for and demanding
better depictions of bisexual people.
Here it is now, and you're playing a lesbian.
Yes, Callie Torres is in a lesbian relationship.
She's bisexual.
Sara Ramirez is such a great example of
somebody who represents who she is on camera and in real life.
That a bisexual can play a bisexual
is a very novel and new thing when it comes to television.
It's like, "Wow, we can actually be ourselves."
During her arc on Grey's Anatomy,
Callie fell in love with both men and women,
including fan favorite George O'Malley, played by actor T.R. Knight.
Is this really what you want?
'Cause if it's really what you want, we could do it.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. Really?
Really.
Coming out, I think I'd be lying
if I wasn't saying it's something that terrified me...
constantly.
There's this constant bargaining that is happening of, like,
"Well, someday I will, but it's gonna be under this circumstance
and I'm gonna be in a relationship."
It's exhausting.
So in 2006, I had a conversation with an actor
who was not out publicly.
He was out privately but not publicly.
But he talked about his life
and how he goes to this kind of ceremony with someone else
or he'll do this,
and the whole navigation of not being out publicly.
And the more he talked about it, it just...
It just made me very sad.
In October 2006, a story leaked from the Grey's Anatomy set
that Isaiah Washington had called another cast member a gay slur.
The press latched on to the story,
but they did not know who was on the receiving end of the slur.
Once it came out that there's only one unmarried male member
of Grey's Anatomy at that time,
you know, it's kind of obvious,
you know, where the arrow was pointing.
And so the choice was...
to deny,
to ignore, or to come out.
There are so many things that are out of our control.
The only thing you can control is yourself, and so that's what he did.
He spoke to the issue. He owned for himself what it meant.
He came out.
He sort of took control of that narrative, which was a beautiful thing to see.
You all stand on each other's shoulders, right?
So all the people that came out before me,
I could look to them and...
build on their strength.
And it shows that you can be grateful for even a time of your life
that you were... miserable.
If we have to tell you who our guest for tonight is,
you're living on another planet.
Ellen DeGeneres is with us.
Where you gonna go, Ellen?
I've been having such a hard time all year long.
I mean, there's just been a lot of stuff coming out of me
between doing something that I'm proud of for the first time in my life
and then getting attacked for it.
So it's been a grieving period all along.
I've been in depression, in and out, because it's been really hard for me.
I was getting slammed by every newspaper, every late-night talk show.
I was the butt of the joke, and I wasn't prepared for that.
So I went into hiding because I thought that's the only thing I can do.
You know, people in this industry didn't want to hire me.
So I moved and stayed away for a while
and kind of went into a depression.
All people talked about was, "Ellen is a lesbian. Ellen came out."
And I think that that's all people could think about.
But it was exactly the opposite.
I just wanted to do it and get it out of the way
so I wasn't carrying around this secret.
But I-- I mean, I look at it as a gift.
Because I worked really hard to get to where I was.
I lost everything by doing something
that was the most important thing to me as a human being
in this journey that I'm on, and then I got to start all over again.
In 2002, television producer Jim Paratore
had an idea to convince local TV stations that Ellen should host her own talk show.
I had to go on tour and do shows.
Jim's idea was, "Let's show them that you're funny.
We'll go to specific markets where we know
they're struggling with this decision about a talk show.
You'll meet with them backstage afterwards."
A lot of these station managers,
the first thing they would say to him is, "She doesn't even curse."
I guess all gay people curse or something.
That it was a shock to him that I was clean.
And then they saw who I was.
I wanted people to remember that I was funny.
But we had to go around the country...
and... beg.
By the end of 2002,
Ellen had gotten enough local affiliates
to commit to take a chance on her new talk show.
Sharon Osbourne was getting a show at the same time.
They were teaming us up together and kind of making them buy me.
They said, "If you get Sharon, you have to take Ellen."
So, I was like the brussels sprouts on the side of the dish that you order.
She is funny, she's quirky, and she's got a brand-new TV show.
Ellen DeGeneres says
the appropriately titled Ellen DeGeneres Show is her passion,
the thing she eats, sleeps and breathes, and it premieres today.
Ellen, good morning. Welcome back.
Well, good morning.
Are you going to talk about being gay?
Are you gonna talk about what you've talked about in the past?
Your personal life?
I haven't talked about that for a long time.
But I think everyone just was scared to death.
They just thought it could fail
if everybody, you know, would be reminded that I was gay.
I had to adjust what I was wearing,
and I had to be careful of what I was saying.
And I kept saying that it's not fair,
because, you know, I lost my straight audience,
a lot of my straight audience when I came out.
And now I'm gonna try to pretend like I'm not gay,
and then I'm gonna have no one.
Let me just be myself.
It's September 8th. This is our very, very first show.
And you are my very first audience.
And...
Her coming back is that power, it's that strength.
It's that...
"Wait a minute. You're not gonna just shut me up
and think I'm gonna go crawl off and never be heard of again. No."
We're gonna win 'em over, and that's what she did.
I feel like people that would vote against gay marriage were like, "But I love Ellen.
But I watch Ellen every day."
She gets the chance to speak to people from all different corners of the US,
and she shows them what her life is like and that she's just like everybody else.
The fact that she's there every day and you can turn on the television
and there's Ellen.
The ripple effects of that are incalculable.
By the end of the first season, The Ellen DeGeneres Show
was one of the highest-rated shows on daytime television.
I hope we're talking here in five years, if you want it to go that long
and we're still talking about the next guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
-I'd like it to go, actually, 15 years. -Okay, I'm sorry--
And 16 years later,
we're doing this amazing, fun show that makes people feel good,
and I look out in the audience and I see every color of skin, every age group.
It just makes me feel like I did everything that I wanted to do and more.
Whatever happened and however it happened, I am able to now, because I'm married,
and I can say "my wife" on TV a lot.
There's a smile on my face, there's a spring in my step,
and there's a ring on my finger.
And talk about being gay.
I appreciate you being here. I'm Ellen, and I'm gay.
Twenty years ago, I said that. It was a much bigger deal then.
Ellen is a boss.
She's a badass.
She may have lost the battle, but she won the war.
What she did was go past entertainer and become icon.
She truly is a phoenix.
She rose from the ashes and has this amazing career.
I think the kind of tenacity
and her willingness to live her truth no matter what
is what has made Ellen have such staying power.
Look how many people love her now.
All that's behind.
I'm pretty sure sometimes she's out there like, "You motherfuckers."
She'll never admit it, but-- "You wishy-washy motherfuckers."