When “My So-Called Life” debuted in 1994, there weren’t many portraits of gay teenagers on television. Wilson Cruz changed that
I was 19 when we made the pilot. You were 13. But I felt no separation from you. I remember having these conversations with you and thinking back, “Could she really comprehend what I was talking about?” But you did.We were all kind of venturing forth into a big unknown. For you, it was probably that much more heightened, because there hadn’t been a precedent.Jared [Leto] had done a Noxzema commercial, so he was big time.My agent sent me the script, and she didn’t necessarily know that I was gay.
I don’t mean to compare our experiences actually because adolescence is something everybody has to go through, and of course it’s dark. But what you were doing was remarkable. I don’t think I was able to know that from my vantage point at the time we worked together.I knew you were gay, and I knew you had made this choice to come out, and you were still very raw from that. I don’t think I really knew that you had been rejected by your parents. Honestly, I wasn’t really talking about it.
So when I walked in and met with [casting director] Mary Goldberg, it felt really personal to me. We went through the scene. There wasn’t a lot in the pilot, because I didn’t say a lot. Mary looked at me like, “Thank you.” I started to well up. I walked to the door to leave, not knowing if I was going to come back or not. I turned around and said to her, “Before I go, please do me a favor and tell Winnie Holzman, this would have meant so much to me when I was 16 years old to see this guy on TV.
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