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发帖数: 19713 | 1 Sean Maher Says He's Gay, Closet Made Him Miserable
By Jeremy Kinser
Sean Maher x390 (fair) | ADVOCATE.COM
Actor Sean Maher, who plays a closeted gay man named Sean on The Playboy
Club, says he's gay in real life and living in the closet made him "
miserable," according to Entertainment Weekly.
Maher, who is a father to two children along with his partner of nine years,
has never publicly discussed his sexual orientation. He admits that he was
nervous to do the interview, but later adds, "This is my coming out ball. I
’ve been dying to do this.”
Maher, probably best known for the cult series Firefly, recalls that when he
began his career on the Fox drama Ryan Caulfield: Year One, he was advised
by his publicists, who were unaware he's gay, to keep his girlfriend out of
the spotlight to not compromise his appeal to a female demographic. Maher
says he decided against being honest to his publicist because earlier his
manager, who also didn't know of Maher's sexual orientation, had told him to
get a girlfriend so people wouldn't presume he's gay.
Maher, then 22, was also concerned that coming out would prevent his landing
other roles.
"I didn’t know anything," he says. "So that sort of started the idea of,
okay, well, I’m working a lot, I guess I’ll just keep that gay part of my
life on the back burner for now. I went so far as to sleep with women a
couple times. It was a very confusing time for me.”
Maher found being a closeted actor to be a tormented existence. “It was so
exhausting, and I was so miserable,” Maher says. “I didn’t really have
any life other than work and this façade I was putting on. So I kept my
friends from college [where he was out] separate from my work friends, and
that was very confusing. I just kept going on and on painting this picture
of somebody I wasn’t. I didn’t have time for a personal relationship
anyway. And you just don’t realize that it’s eating away at your soul.”
Maher reveals that while working for out producers Craig Zadan and Neil
Meron, who would become mentors to the young actor, on two projects set him
on the path to coming out publicly. “[Craig] says he knew the instant he
met me, although he told me this months later," Maher says. "Craig was a
really wonderful mentor to me because he knew, but he never asked me and
never forced me to say anything. He just did his best to indirectly guide me
.”
Maher's character in early '60s-set The Playboy Club, which premiered last
Monday, is involved in founding the Chicago chapter of Mattachine Society,
one of the country's first gay rights groups. It's a story that Maher says
needed to be told. “That’s part of the reason I wanted to do it so badly,
” Maher says.
“Creatively, I feel so much more open and free, and I am so happy on The
Playboy Club,” Maher says. “I think it’s because I’ve never been so open
on set. All of the relationships that I have off-camera, I never would have
allowed five years ago. It feels so liberating.” |
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