‘Queer as Folk’ Star Talks Show’s Legacy at 25th Anniversary Screening

To close out a lively and, at times, heartfelt Q&A featuring a handful of actors and the key creative team responsible for Showtime’s Queer as Folk, moderator Frank DeCaro asked the panelists the night’s most profound question timed to the milestone anniversary: “Looking back over the last 25 years, what influence do you think Queer As Folk had on television and the world?”

Without missing a beat, Peter Paige, who starred as the flamboyant and beloved character Emmett Honeycutt, said, “Give me that goddamn microphone,” a demand that telegraphed a powerful statement was about to be dropped.

“I don’t think Queer as Folk gets nearly enough credit for being at the forefront of the golden age of television, and I mean that 100 percent,” said Paige, who graduated from the show to become a successful TV creator, writer and producer (The Fosters, Good Trouble). “Adding complicated, sexualized adult characters into the television landscape — nobody had done it before us. To quote New York magazine, which in the first article written about the show said, ‘Queer as Folk makes Sex and the City look a Saturday morning cartoon.’ We changed the way adults were depicted on television, and people forget it all the fucking time.”

It was clear that the panelists seated inside NeueHouse Hollywood’s screening room agreed. Paige was joined by creators Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman — who developed the series for American television by adapting it from Russell T. Davies British series of the same name — and actors Sharon Gless, Hal Sparks, Robert Gant, Scott Lowell, Michelle Clunie and Thea Gill. The Showtime series, which also starred Gale Harold and Randy Harrison, produced five seasons and 83 episodes. It was widely hailed at the time for its frank depictions of gay relationships (sex and all), community, queer drama and joy.

The 45-minute conversation followed a screening of the Kelly Makin-directed “I Love You,” episode 10 from season five, which featured a bombing at Pittsburgh club Babylon during a fundraiser to fight a fictional piece of legislation that threatened the rights of same-sex couples. The event was presented by Pride LIVE! Hollywood, and in his introductory remarks, DeCaro noted how the June 12 date coincided with the nine-year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting.

After Paige answered the question, Sparks came quick with his own response. “We’re in the most recent issue of Emmy magazine. And my old publicist said, ‘Hey, do you want a copy?’ My first thought was, fuck those guys because they drove right past us every single season. You’ve seen tonight some of the work and the pairings that you see up here and the depth of the work that everybody put in. I was just happy to share in that in my time on the show, but it is abundantly clear that we definitely hit that mark as a show multiple times and were overlooked because of the nature of the show. The upside is that’s how you know it’s historic. That’s how you knew it was necessary. That’s how you knew it was a fearless thing in a fearful world.”

Lipman, who with Cowen also wrote the seminal gay film An Early Frost, said that they knew Queer As Folk arrived at “a particular time” that wouldn’t replay itself. “This show could never be done today. It would never be done today. We actually stopped doing series after Queer as Folk because we didn’t want to go back to the networks where you can’t do this, you can’t do that, censors, whatever,” explained Lipman, who also credited Showtime for its “no limits” motto at the time and for never interfering with creative decisions. “There have been other gay series, but I don’t think they’ve ever matched Queer as Folk, and I don’t think anything ever really will.”

Other panelists, like Gant, who came out as a result of his participation on the groundbreaking series, said the real legacy of the show has been how many lives were saved. “For all these 20 years since the show [ended], I have always gotten, and I know all of us have gotten letters from people around the world that said, ‘I didn’t kill myself because of your show. I didn’t kill myself because of your character,’” Gant said. “It changed my life. I was one of those closeted people who came out because of the show. The whole thing was beyond a blessing.”

DeCaro, who said “Emmys would’ve been nice but you saved lives and you changed the world which is way better,” also asked the actors to detail how they got cast on the show. The lively segment ended with Gless, who got teary at points during her answer. When she first heard of the project, Gless, a TV legend best known for Cagney & Lacey, was experiencing “an off time in my career, in my life,” and had decamped to Chicago to do a play.

“I was at a sad time in my life and this gift was delivered to me,” Gless explained. “I picked up the phone and I called Showtime. I fucking did. I’ve never done that before. I called Showtime and I knew the assistant of [president of programming Jerry Offsay]. I said to Carol, ‘I just read Queer as Folk and I want that part. I want to be in it.”

Offsay called her back in five minutes, and that led to an offer to fly to Los Angeles to meet with Lipman and Cowen. “These two men, pardon me, changed my life in many, many ways,” Gless said, fighting back tears. Lipman and Cowen confirmed that no one else was even considered for the role of mouthy matriarch Debbie Novotny. It was Paige who then remembered what Gless told the creative pair about why she lobbied so hard to get the gig: “I smell trouble and I want to be a part of it.”

Pride LIVE! Hollywood, a monthlong celebration of LGBTQ+ creativity in media and entertainment, is being put on in conjunction with L.A’s Infinity Festival, the Hollywood Partnership and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. The Hollywood Reporter is on board as presenting media sponsor. A schedule of events can be found here.