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The queer report: Robert Gant and Peter Paige say Queer as Folk has made them reassess their goals and values. In a candid conversation, they report on the show's evolution—and their own progress in bridging their inner butch and fem - Interview - Cover Story
Advocate, The, April 15, 2003 by Michael Rowe
It's a slate-gray, icy Sunday afternoon in Toronto, and light outside is obscure. Robert Gant wrapped a Queer as Folk night shoot at 7 A.M. and managed a few hours of sleep before trundling over to Hair of the Dog, a popular restaurant on Toronto's Church Street whose exterior would be familiar to any devotee of the show. Upstairs, Gant joins a better-rested Peter Paige, who's already settled at a table, sipping tea.
It's midway through the filming of Queer as Folk's third season--Gant's second season on the show--and the actors are happy to have a brief respite, even if it means a caffeine-fueled brunch with a writer, over the course of which no topic is off-limits, including, among other things, the definition of masculinity.
Even though Paige and Gant in person are at peace with their masculine and feminine sides, the characters they portray (Emmett and Ben, respectively) often represent Queer as Folk's extremes of nelly and butch. Amid a show that has forced gays to confront vital issues such as HIV-positive-HIV-negative relationships, body culture, sex obsession, drug use, ageism, fidelity, and parenthood, these two out actors have had to explore their own images of themselves and the communities in which they live.
Let's talk about the new season--it's unfolding in some interesting new directions. Where is the story going?
Paige: I think the third season is the best season by far. [Executive producers] Dan [Lipman] and Ron [Cowen] have said from the beginning that this is the story of boys becoming men. All of the characters have taken a step forward. The first season was "Meet these people and their world," the second season was "Look what's happening to these people!" and the third season is us [helping] each other grow up, challenging each other in these really intricate, intense relationships. It's about coming together and coming apart.
Gant: The new season is definitely about relationships--what works and what doesn't. Family--what makes a family. Much less drugs- and Babylon-centric. Paige: I'm hardly ever in Babylon these days. It's rare I ever shoot [on that set]. It's a little bit--and not because Dan and Ron are kowtowing to anyone---the season that the critics have all been asking for. You can't watch this third season and say, "Nobody's in a relationship!" Everybody is in a relationship!
Including your character, Emmett, and his best friend, Ted. Is the notion of gay male best friends becoming lovers a realistic one? Does it happen, in your opinion?
Paige: More than we think. If you actually ask people in long-term relationships how they met, half of them might say, "We met in a bar" or "at the baths," and the other half will tell you, "We were really good friends, and we woke up one day and said, `You're hot!'" My best friend only dates within my circle.
Have you done it yourself, though?
Paige: I'm addicted to chemistry--that spark that happens when you meet someone and you're in awe of how attracted you are to them. No, I've never dated one of my friends.
Ben and Michael are the only visible example of an HIV-positive-negative relationship on TV. Do you have a sense that you're exploring a taboo?
Gant: It's another level of discrimination. It's a phobia within the culture.
Paige: It runs both ways, I have to say. I know plenty of positive guys who won't date negative guys. The prejudices around positive-negative issues are just more ways we keep each other separate and alone and isolated.
Gant: It's about fear, and the greatest fear is fear of death. In no other situation is the contemplation of living and dying so intertwined with love and sex. And it's more of a taboo within our culture than anywhere else because of the devastation we've endured.
Paige: We've made one huge mistake with AIDS education as a community, and that is, we have made it fear-based: "Use a condom, or you will die." And at a certain point you get tired of being afraid. You want to feel alive. The one thing we need to do to make people safe is work on self-esteem. It's the biggest problem in our community.
Gant: The message ought to be "Your life is worth saving. Take care of it."
Paige: There's a place in all of us where we think, Maybe I should die. Would it be so bad?
What do you hope viewers get out of the Ben-and-Michael story line--specifically, with regard to HIV and what it means in Ben's life?
Gant: That you don't die! That HIV does not equal death. You have to take care of yourself. There are many, many people living perfectly healthy lives with HIV, with or without medication--and I think that's a case-by-case basis. It's such a different contemplation when I read posts on the [Showtime] Web site like, "Oh, I hope Ben doesn't die!" That's where people's minds go.
I'm really happy the show is exploring this. It's never been done before. I can't tell you the number of letters I've received or the number of people who have come up to me. [Being gay and positive is] doubly exclusionary. Not only are you dealing with acceptance around gay/straight, you're dealing with acceptance issues within your own peer group. Fear. People literally afraid of you. It's such a common dynamic that's emerging for gay men to have to contemplate. Do I date? Do I not date? Positive men have to contemplate whether to date only positive men or do they date negative men? And I think the same thoughts occur to negative men.
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