CHARLIE CARVER
One of Hollywood’s new generation of out-and-proud gay actors.
Charlie Carver is one of Hollywood’s new generation of out-and-proud gay actors. He’s played the son of a Desperate Housewife, a teen wolf, a war-wounded soldier and was one of The Boys In
The Band for Ryan Murphy. He chatted with Ian Horner for DNA.
Being twins and actors, and always being hired together, can be a blessing or a curse. Charlie Carver has never had a problem with it but, since he came out, his career has also taken off in its own direction.
Right now he’s starring, without his brother Max, in two major Netflix productions for Ryan Murphy. Both are big-budget reimaginings of landmark projects from previous decades: Ratched, based on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), and a remake of The Boys In The Band (1970).
He’s still being cast with Max. They’re both on a COVID-enforced break from shooting The Batman together, along with Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Wright and Peter Sarsgaard.
Charlie was in the recent Broadway smashhit revival of The Boys In The Band with an impressive cast of other marquee gay actors including Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer and Jim Parsons. They’re all back for the Netflix version.
It’s a landmark production for this generation, too, for another reason. Ryan Murphy says: “These guys are the first generation of gay actors who said, ‘We’re going to live authentic lives and hope and pray our careers remain on track,’ – and they have. I find that profound.”
It is. Finally, out gay actors can play gay characters on stage and screen without hurting their careers. Charlie is riding the crest of this wave along with his highly regarded co-stars.
We first met Charlie and Max on Wisteria Lane and watched them grow up when they took over as teenaged Porter and Preston Scavo, Felicity Huffman’s twins on Desperate Housewives. Then they were hunky teen idols on Teen Wolf.
Their screen work made the most of being identical but there are distinguishing points. While they were born just minutes apart – it was long enough to give them different birthdays. Charlie, the older, was born on July 31, 1988. Max was born the next day, August 1. They were twins on Desperate Housewives, but Charlie was in 62 episodes, and Max in 40.
It’s not easy to tell them apart but look closer – they’re what’s called “mirror twins”. Charlie is right-handed, Max is a lefty. Charlie is gay, Max is straight.
“And let the record show my twin brother is just as cool for being straight,” said Charlie when he came out. Incidentally, something their own father had done many years before.
We spoke to Charlie by Skype from Los Angeles…
DNA: You got lots of support when you came out on Instagram, and you’ve wondered, on Twitter, how long will it be until coming out is unnecessary. How long, do you think? Charlie Carver: I’m hopeful about the generation or two after me; certainly the generation after them. Coming out sort of assumes there’s something uncomfortable to be disclosed. I see kids freely expressing themselves, and that’s really hopeful. Pressure to come out reinforces the idea we’re not normal.
Exactly. It’s paradoxical, right?
At the time, you posted: “Be who you needed when you were younger.” What did you need when you were younger that you didn’t have? Interesting question. So much has changed in my lifetime, even in my profession. What I needed when I was younger was visibility. I didn’t see many possibilities on screen about how a gay man could look or feel or behave. Gay characters were the butt of jokes. I didn’t see a fully affirmed gay person and I needed to. I wish I’d been braver when I was younger.
I wish I could go back and give the same selfassurance I grew into to that little person. One can only imagine how much more somebody will flower when they have that kind of confidence earlier.
Why did you hate yourself for saying “I’m gay” the first time?
Yeah, I don’t know. I think I just hated having a word that distilled the feeling of difference I’d been experiencing, and that I was going to have to accept it about myself. Let me clarify – I don’t think it was entirely internalised homophobia. Here’s this word that I have no control over, that’s going to mean so much to so many, and I’ll no longer be Charlie but this label.
It was compounded by the fact that my dad had actually come out when I was 11 or 12 and I saw how that effected his relationship with his parents, especifically his father, who disowned him, and I felt by accepting my gayness I was also putting myself at risk.
Did your father and his father ever reconcile? Not fully, sadly. My dad went in and took care of him in his final days. I will say that my grandfather accepted me. Even before I came out – he died before I did that – but I was living pretty openly about who I was.
How did your dad react when you came out? Nothing could’ve made him happier! He said, “I always had a sense this was true and I love you no matter what and I want you to be who you need to be.” I think my mom was offended I didn’t say anything sooner and that I told my dad first.
My parents had separated so I didn’t grow up with my dad. When he came out it immediately firmed-up what I already knew about myself, and I was a bit afraid of that. And, if I’m honest, there was a sense of betrayal. If my dad could come out to me then why couldn’t he have come out sooner? Why 12 years of secrecy?
Did you suspect your father was gay?
I had no idea, which is funny because I think all my siblings did.
How did you react when he came out to you?
I said he was my dad and, of course, I’d always love him. We were actually getting on a plane to Australia, of all places [smiles]. The flight had a really rough patch over the ocean and we lost cabin pressure and dropped for about 20 seconds, oxygen masks appeared – truly a near-death experience for me. Later, I asked my dad if he thought we were going to die and he said yes.
So, the flight had this major life-or-death moment coupled with a really traumatic announcement. He was teaching in Melbourne, at the University Of Victoria. I have very fond feelings of being in Australia but I don’t have clear memories because I honestly blacked out that whole month.
How did it compare when you came out to him?
He made me feel absolutely accepted. I can only imagine the fear he felt about disclosing to his kids so many years before.
As a twin, how hard has it been for you to carve out your own identity?
I’ll speak for us both and say it hasn’t been hard. There was an insistence when we were young to follow our own passions. It’s funny, as you know, Max and I have taken different paths. We went to high schools across the country from each other and yet we arrived at a lot of the same conclusions about life.
Hollywood is a different story, but I want to say that I’ve always been super appreciative on every show I’ve worked on with my brother. The writers felt out our differences and always wrote to our strengths as individuals. I’ve never felt like a prop, which is a pitfall of being a twin in entertainment [laughs].
As for nature-versus-nurture argument about what makes us gay, you’re proof that we’re born this way, right?
Absolutely! My brother and I are mirror twins. I’m right-handed and he’s left-handed, even though we’re identical. Mirror twins are ideal case studies for research on epigenetics because the cell is split perfectly down the middle, yet there’s bilateral symmetry. There are correlations between handedness and sexuality. Researchers always tried to poach >>
My dad came out to me as we were getting on a plane to Australia.
>> us for studies but our parents said nah. What was Desperate Housewives like?
It was my first job in the business, after my second or third audition. I knew we were joining a pretty big show but I didn’t know the demands of working on a set. It was stressful as fuck. Everybody was so kind, and not because they had to be. I look back at the scale of it and the turnaround and it was just this machine – and a machine everybody was watching. It couldn’t feel further away yet it also feels like just yesterday.
Who did you like working with most?
I loved our little family unit. That’s mainly who I worked with. Felicity [Huffman] went to my high school. She was always held up as this incredible alumnus so it felt magical to be working with this person who’d been vaunted for the past four years of my life, and she was just wonderful to my brother and I.
Dustin Lance Black, who you worked with on When We Rise, told me his regret about Milk was casting Sean Penn rather than an out gay actor. He spent ages going to every agency in town asking specifically for actors he knew as gay and their agents would look him in the eye and say, “We don’t have any gay actors on our books!”
Yeah. It’s a culture that perpetuates itself. I fully respect the right of any actor to separate their private and professional lives. But with implicit homophobia, or even just the fear that in Hollywood being out will affect your career, there aren’t enough out actors to call on. I believe in the importance of visibility and representation. I also don’t necessarily have a problem with a straight-identifying actor in a gay role.
It’s important for a community to tell its own stories but any actor’s primary tool is empathy and when straight men play gay roles, on some level, it destabilises an audience’s homophobia. I’m not saying it’s preferential, I’m really not, but when you can build affection through an actor or a character, you can start to take down these structures of hate.
The exception is trans roles. They should only be played by trans actors until there’s any equity in our world where, at some point in the future, a cis actor could play them.
I’d love to be considered viable for straight roles. I don’t feel limited in my heart about that kind of work but I think best efforts have to be made to cast gay actors in gay roles. I’ve been lucky to have been a part of the widened work available to gay men. Trans folks need that same opportunity. Having trans folks play all kind of trans people on screen is essential in affirming their dignity and humanity in our society and eliminating the prejudice, inequities and violence they disproportionately experience.
Did it still take a measure of courage for Sean Penn to play Harvey Milk?
I think it took creative courage because he was going to be under a lot of scrutiny, but Sean has an incredible amount of talent and has had an incredible career and carries with him an incredible amount of privilege. If anything, it was his responsibility to do a beautiful job and he did that, and more.
What did you take away from When We Rise? I’d only just come out. It felt like a signpost to me that I was on the right path. I’d known Lance when I was younger as a fan of Milk and I met him once and it was an honour to be part of a miniseries telling our community’s history. For that to be my first job out of the gate was, like, overwhelmingly cool!
You did Boys In The Band on stage and now you’ve done it for Netflix. How are the two different?
They’re different by virtue of the medium. They’re both contained in this split-level apartment but a movie is always going to be more naturalistic. Walking onto the soundstage and seeing a much more detailed set with much more worn-in film-ready costumes does something to your imagination. It forces you to drop into a more specific moment.
That said, it was like being right back on stage. To be back working with an ensemble of actors who love each other so much and are so familiar with the words and the subtext – we were playing ball all over again. I loved the energy I got to play with – being so light and loving and loveable in a room that gets pretty venomous pretty quickly!
The play created a stir in the ’70s. What can it say to us now?
Back then, Mart Crowley, the playwright, fearlessly addressed the existence of gay men. We hadn’t been seen that way on stage before. To have gay men represented on stage in a story about their community and sexual identity was pretty radical. Now there’s an extra layer in both the Broadway production and the Netflix film where, for the first time, this scale of production is led by, produced by, acted by an all-out cast and largely out creative team.
There’s an assertion of pride that feels akin to what happened back in the ’60s and ’70s. So much has changed since then and yet so much hasn’t. I mean, the play also hits on race. This group of friends are always bitching and fighting but they’re all experiencing a sense of shame, which draws them together. And now, as then, if you have community you stick to it because you need it and it needs you. I’ve been at many a house party full of slings and arrows and we still love each other.
You’ve done two shows for Ryan Murphy. What’s he like? I have this theory: he works 36 hours a day and never sleeps.
He works so hard but he moves through the world with such grace and power. I love Ryan Murphy. I don’t know how he does it. It’s a magic trick. He kind of floats into a space and radiates fire. He’s so funny and so generous with the people he works with. I don’t know if he’s tired! I think he loves it.
His strengths and weaknesses?
His strength is he’s an incredible storyteller and just knows what’s needed. I can name very few people as capable of creating change through storytelling and media. His only weakness is I wish he were around more.
The Batman?
Yeah, isn’t that wild! I can’t say a damn thing. I’m allowed to say we play twins because IMDB says “The Twins” [since redacted by IMDB] but it’s a major theatrical action movie and it’s going to be so damn cool. Obviously we’re not able to film at this very moment but I was just having the best time on set and I can’t wait to get back! •
When straight men play gay roles, on some level, it destabilises an audience’s homophobia.