Although he played flamboyantly gay Jack McFarland for eight seasons on sitcom hit Will & Grace, star Sean Hayes chose to keep his own sexuality private — a decision he now regrets.
In a new interview with website Oh No They Didn’t, Sean says he now feels like he came out “too late”; but admits at the time he worried about becoming a spokesperson for the gay community when all he really wanted to do was be an actor.
“I was so young,”; says Sean, currently starring in sitcom Sean Saves the World. “It made me go back in the closet [with the media] because I was so overwhelmed at 26 or 27. I didn’t want the responsibility, I didn’t know how to handle the responsibility of speaking for the gay community. I always felt like I owed them a huge apology for coming out too late. Some people in the gay community were very upset with me for not coming out on their terms. They don’t stop to think about what’s going on in somebody’s personal life, and the struggles that they’re having. It was all very scary. We got death threats. It was a really rough time for me, but I was also having the time of my life.”;
As Sean tells it, his new series — in which he plays a gay man who’s also the single father of a teenage daughter — is meant to entertain, not make a political statement. “I want to make people laugh first, and that’s it,”; he says. “If a byproduct of that is enlightening somebody to something they wouldn’t otherwise have been exposed to, then great, but that’s certainly not the agenda or the intent of the show.”;
Sean also reveals that his latest character — also named Sean — is a lot closer to his real personality than over-the-top Jack. “That’s the ironic thing,”; he says. “I’m so boring and grounded, and I like quiet and I like structure and I like goals. I couldn’t be more opposite from Jack McFarland.
Sean Saves the World airs Thursdays at 9:01 p.m. EST/PST on Global.
