RAÚL ESPARZA
In a rare interview, Law And Order star, Raúl Esparza discusses coming out as bisexual, the personal freedom of aging, and the enduring appeal of the show that’s made him famous.
The silver-fox Law And Order star on coming out as bisexual and making no apologies!
ACTOR RAÚL ESPARZA, AN AMERICAN OF
Cuban descent, has been a major player on Law And Order: Special Victims Unit as the hard-nosed prosecutor, Assistant DA Rafael Barba for six years. Though his story arc has wound down, he’s still tied to the show on a recurring basis.
He once famously said: “I don’t think there’s anything nice about Barba. He’s kind of an asshole, but I love him.”
So do audiences, but Raúl Esparza is not known to give interviews easily.
You see, four years before starting on SVU, he divorced his wife, Michele Marie Perez, his high-school girlfriend whom he married at 23, divorced at 34, and two years later when asked about it by The New York Times gave a revealing personal story, coming out as bisexual.
“So many artists I admire are bisexual,” he told the Times. “I knew a lot of gay men growing up. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it as long as it was someone else, but not me.”
He related how he’d fallen in love with a man at New York University, a composer, who encouraged him to get into acting. Meanwhile, his mother urged him to get into therapy.
There was a reaction to the story, he felt exposed, and he went to ground. And hasn’t spoken of it publicly since.
I was in New York and talking to him specifically about SVU and living and working in New York, and we covered a lot of ground. Then I went in.
“You may not want to talk about it, and that’s perfectly fine, but you famously told The New York Times you were married to a woman and had an attraction to men, and I have to say that I was in exactly the same situation in my forties,” I revealed about myself.
I paused, gauging his reaction. He responded with a gentle, “Hmm.”
I pressed on: “And my life up-ended. How are you travelling with that situation now? What are you able to say that might encourage others?” I asked.
“I wanna say, I don’t generally talk about my personal life,” he replied. “I just don’t think it’s all that interesting to discuss what an actor is doing in his private life. I used to think I owed that conversation to people but now I don’t. I just don’t. However, having said that, what I will say that’s encouraging is that I often felt I needed to offer a lot of explanation about who I was, who I loved, what I was attracted to and, in a way, apologise for myself because I didn’t fit into what I imagined my life would be. And I don’t believe that any more.
“I don’t believe we owe people explanations about how we live and who we love,” Raúl continued. “I don’t believe these things even need to be fixed on the matrix of human sexuality. I don’t believe there can possibly be anything wrong with loving someone completely, whatever their gender. And over time I think I’ve become less interested in trying to explain myself or apologise. I’m much more joyful about the reality of simply being myself.
“Who I am may not fit anybody’s definition of what a person is supposed to be or how they’re supposed to live. I mean, I’m probably the most conservative guy you’ll ever meet in many ways, but I don’t feel I need to fit a mould anymore.”
Raúl says that shift in attitude comes with getting older.
“I’m 49 now and I really just don’t give a shit what you think of me! [Laughs] But, also, the world has changed. I was raised with a model of sexuality that said all gay men were generally lonely, were generally unhappy. And that’s not true! At all! And here’s an interesting thing… it’s not even what I experienced at the time with the gay men I knew. I did not experience lonely, unhappy men but, nevertheless, I internalised
that story. I believed that anything that wasn’t 100 per cent ‘normal’, meaning 100 per cent heterosexual, as if anybody ever is, meant that you were destined for a life of loneliness and unhappiness, and that’s completely not true.”
Raúl believes we can convince ourselves that a particular set of ideas is true, even when the evidence suggests otherwise.
“It wasn’t what I was seeing, but our minds are very powerful and can convince us that a narrative is true, even when it’s not,” he says. “Where I’m at now is partly because the world has changed, partly because I’ve gotten older, and partly because I don’t owe anybody explanations any more. And there’s a real freedom in that.”
Experiencing this sense of freedom now, I wondered how Raúl felt looking back at his earlier life.
“What I’m most upset about is if I look back at myself and catch myself apologising for who I am. You know, when I look back at interviews I’ve done in the past or I think back on situations where I found myself trying to make other people comfortable with me. That’s a very sad place for anybody to be in and I hope fewer and fewer people feel the need to do that as the world spins forward.
“Lord knows, in this country right now we are less… well, let’s not get into that! [Laughs] I still fundamentally believe we’re gonna be okay. [Laughs] But every day you turn on the news and you think, “Oh, no, he’s at it again. I can’t keep up with him.”
My visit to New York surprised me. I wasn’t prepared for how accepting it has become. The burly customs officer at JFK took our passports, looked my partner and I up and down, paused, and said, gruffly, “You guys here on your honeymoon?” I went crimson. “You’re blushing!” he shouted and laughed, catching me off-guard. I tell this story to Raúl.
“I know what you mean,” he laughs. “We went to see a movie last night and were being particularly silly on the way there, but nobody even looked at us. It’s just a city that functions by the live-and-let-live motto. Yes, it’s extremely accepting. New Yorkers are pretty tremendous. I live in Chelsea by the High Line, and it’s entirely different to what it was like when I was here in school. Then it was really rundown and full of drug-dealers and hookers.
“The city has changed a great deal since September 11. I was playing at the Jane Street Theatre [on Broadway]. I remember the date vividly. It was upsetting, it was frightening, and it was like being suspended outside of things while at the same time I have never experienced so much focused care from almost everyone you met. It was the city at its absolute finest.”
SVU is now in its 20th season. Dozens of other police drams have launched and fallen by the wayside in that time. Raúl says the credit for its longevity goes to lead actress, Mariska Hargitay.
“The show lives and dies on Olivia’s character and Mariska’s commitment to it,” he says. “She’s the heart of the show on-screen and off. She treats every episode like it’s the first one. I don’t know how she does it. She’s as passionate and curious and as inspired by an episode now as she was in the episode when I joined [season 14 in 2012].
“She has an innate ability to make people feel special, and she welcomes people – so they come and do very good work on our set. That contributes a great deal to the consistently good performances we get, to the guest stars we get, like Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Cynthia Nixon, Robin Williams, Sharon Stone, Amanda Seyfried, Bradley Cooper, Alec Baldwin, Serena Williams…” Raúl trails off.
“Mariska and Chris Maloney were the iconic team,” says Raúl. “They brought in [writerproducer] Warren Leight who played around with character development and different ways of telling a story while still following the procedural format. The show got pulled into an interesting conversation about what was going on in America in terms of race and sexual politics and casual violence. And that keeps the show pertinent.”
When Chris left the show, there were questions about whether the show could survive without him; whether Hargitay alone could carry it.
“She’s more than risen to the occasion,” says Raúl.
I don’t believe we owe people explanations about how we live and who we love.