Desperate Housewives star Doug Savant has revealed why he didn’t come out as straight while playing a gay character.
Savant played Melrose Place gay character Matt Fielding, a Los Angeles social worker, from 1992 to 1997, but never revealed during his time on the show that he was straight in real life.
Joining former co-stars Daphne Zuniga, Laura Leighton and Courtney Thorne-Smith on their It’s Still the Place podcast, Savant, who played Lynette Scavo’s husband Tom in Desperate Housewives, discussed why he chose not to reveal that he was heterosexual.
“When we were shooting all those things and the trailers for the show, I said to Sam, our publicist: ‘Do you care to talk about how we’re going to handle this going forward, that there was a gay character?’
“I knew it was exceptional, and I thought people would be interested. But she goes: ‘Well, no, it’s not a big deal. You’re an actor, you’re just playing a character’,” he continued. “And I said, ‘Oh, clearly she doesn’t get it’.”
Savant revealed he was asked by the show’s PR team, and creator Darren Star, why he wouldn’t just reveal that he wasn’t gay, adding: “I said I wasn’t going to make my living playing a gay man, but then say, ‘Oh, I would never be associated with that’.”
At the time, Matt was the only gay character on TV, he claimed.
Last month, Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry said he had an idea for a spin-off show. Before that, Jesse Metcalfe, who played gardener John Rowland for five years, claimed there had been conversations about a return to Wisteria Lane, 12 years after the original show ended.
