Billy Crystal blazed trails in the 1970s by playing Jodie Dallas on Soap, the first openly gay character to regularly appear on a network television show.
These days, however, the 66-year-old funnyman thinks that TV”;s depiction of homosexuality has come a long way — perhaps even too far.
Speaking to journalists at the TV Critics Association press tour on Sunday, Billy recalled the controversy of playing a gay man on television.
“I did it in front of a live audience,”; recalls Billy of Soap, “and there were times where I would say to [the actor who played his boyfriend], “Bob, “I love you,’ and the audience would laugh nervously, because, you know, it’s a long time ago, that I’d feel this anger. I wanted to stop the tape and go, “What is your problem?’ Because it made you sort of very self-conscious about what we were trying to do then. And now it’s just, I see it and I just hope people don’t abuse it and shove it in our face — well, that sounds terrible — to the point of it just feels like an everyday kind of thing.”;
Crystal made the remarks while promoting his upcoming FX series The Comedians, in which he and Josh Gad (Frozen) play a pair of mismatched comics forced to work together on a sketch comedy show.
Billy’s comments did not go over well with members of the LGBT community, some of whom took to Twitter to express their outrage.
@BillyCrystal Sorry Billy but “gay scenes”; on TV aren’t pushing it. Wanna know what is pushing it? It’s subtle bigotry in 2014. #StopBigotry
— psychedelicatessen (@MentalRiot) January 19, 2015
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
#BillyCrystal – What a complete and utter homophobic tool.
— Kay Dekker (@kay_way) January 19, 2015
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Hetero scenes have been “Pushing It’ for decades! #BillyCrystal Says #Gay Scenes on TV Are ‘Pushing It’ https://t.co/Lum1gKNl84 via @YahooTV
— Hadrian Bradley (@HadrianBradley) January 19, 2015
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Did Billy cross the line with his comments? Let us know what you think on Twitter or Facebook.
