CHARLIE CARVER
IN CONVERSATION WITH WILLIAM J CONNOLLY.
After soaring to success in his role on the acclaimed Teen Wolf, Charlie Carver has since come out and is living openly and freely as a proud gay man. We caught up with him on the importance of queer representation, toxic masculinity and homophobia in Hollywood.
He’s the actor that went from teen (wolf) sensation to Hollywood superstar. Out, visible, and proudly pushing the queer agenda in the 50th anniversary Broadway production of Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band, Charlie Carver really is living the American dream. Here, the 29-year-old star dives into the suffocating confines of toxic masculinity, tackles homophobia in Hollywood, and opens up about his own journey of self-acceptance.
WC: What does Pride mean to Charlie Carver? CC: There’s individual pride and the pride in being part of something larger than yourself. For me, coming out, there’s poetics of that. Not only is it an acknowledgement of your sexuality and who you are, but of coming out and coming into your own. I’m not unafraid to really claim what I want and claim who I am – to be unapologetic about how I see the world and in what I want to contribute to that world. There’s also the pride in seeing that you have this experience and initiation that you had that’s shared by so many other people. You say ‘Hey, we’re pretty special for that, and we have something special to teach because of it. We’re going to stay strong, be there for one and another’.
WC: You mention being unapologetically yourself. Were you censoring who you were before going public?
CC: Totally. I don’t actually think you come out once in your life, you come out again and again. Publicly coming out or personally coming out, I realised how much, in retrospect, I really censored myself or how I was giving my personality to be palatable for other people. Even though I was very much out in Los Angeles socially, I found I wasn’t happy because I wasn’t living truthfully. The other thing is you realise the fear is insidious and affected my personal relationships. WC: And was coming out publicly a conversation you’d considered for a while? CC: As soon as I started working in the business, I remember having conversations with Felicity Huffman when we were doing Desperate Housewives about this being who I am and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the point where I feel comfortable coming out, but I wish the climate would change and that I weren’t struling. It’s something that I struled with for years, but I wanted to get to a place where I’d accomplished enough, or that I felt secure in myself that if I did say something, there would be an audience who might hear it. I also got to the point where I said to myself that I’d checked some of these boxes I really wanted, and if I can’t live forward more outwardly then I don’t really want to be in this business, anyway.
WC: Did you find after coming out that you were stamped with the tag of a ‘gay actor’? CC: Of course. I think there’s definitely the possibility of being... I guess you call it pigeonholed into ‘gay roles’, but I think the nature of content is changing. I think queer storytelling is coming back in a way that it’s about the human in the story who happens to be gay, as oppose to a gay stock type. I’m not afraid to play gay characters because I think they’re becoming more dynamic and well-rounded characters. I welcome it, but at the same time it’s unfortunate because what you hear is sort of true. People will try and scare you away from coming out because they say it will ruin your career. It got to the point where I just felt that was unfair. I didn’t want to work in a business where that was true.
WC: Have you experienced homophobia within the industry?
CC: Absolutely. I know it’s in the background when it comes to casting a lot of the time, but even more overtly through my presentation I’ve had in the past. I remember being out at events with people and somebody making a comment to me that my behaviour and response was effeminate and I’d have to “be careful how I expressed myself in public”. It created that atmosphere of threat.
WC: How much do you think toxic masculinity plays a part in what you just mentioned? CC: This is tricky, right? Because even now, I feel a sense of guilt. I recognise my privilege as a white gay man, mostly passing, where I feel like even by participating in the culture and by having the opportunities I’ve had, I’m reinforcing this idea of masculinity. I do think that is changing and people want to see gender presented in different ways or expressed in different ways in how
stories are now told. I wonder how do I, as an individual, recognise how I’m part of the problem and what can I do to change that. I think there’s such a necessary conversation about gender identity and toxic masculinity happening now. As a kid, I was what you might call ‘a femme kid’. I really loved dressing up, mothering dolls, Barbies, singing and – in some ways – it was conditioned out of me and I allowed it to be commissioned out of me, so I will always wonder who that little person would have grown into without this messaging from the outside. But at the same time, what’s great is accepting who you are as an individual in terms of where we are right now as a culture, and saying that I accept who I am, my conditioning included. How do I both liberate and help find that person that might have been, but also improve upon the person I am now – accept and grow from the present?
WC: I imagine when you get presented with the opportunity to work with Ryan Murphy and Joe Mantello and this ridiculous cast – which we will come to in a second – on a piece like Boys in The Band, as an LGBTQ person that must be the easiest ‘yes’ you’ve ever given in your life?
CC: When I heard this was happening, I fought like hell to get in the room and be part of it. What’s been so fun about this rehearsal process is that these people I’m working with are the ones that paved the way for me in that I could live outwardly and come out. I saw what Zach (Quinto) was doing and what Jim (Parsons) was doing and all of these guys. To have Ryan (Murphy, producer), who just created these worlds upon worlds of really interesting, queer-friendly projects through all of his storytelling, you go, “Yes, I want to be part of that. I want to feel like I can add my own piece into that”.
WC: The fact these are LGBTQ actors playing mostly queer characters must solidify how fantastic this production will be as it’s these voices amplifying their own stories. Do you agree that’s important, and what does that add in regards to representation somewhere so huge as Broadway?
CC: I do think it’s important because, as far as I know, it hasn’t really happened before on this scale. I think it’s a foot in the sand in 2018. It’s saying, ‘’We’re here, we’ve always been here and we’re not going anywhere.” What really makes it work about the production I can tell so far is that the play very much exists in 1968, but with the vantage of history, these gay actors are able to bring dignity and carry dignity into these roles. Whereas, if it were just a general casting call, I think the audience would sort of see more of the stereotypes existing in these characters than opposed to the human living behind the familiar tropes. WC: Let’s talk about the labels used for marketing the show – anti-gay slurs. What’s the reaction been like to having homophobic slurs on the front of the theatre, and what was it like the first time you all saw them?
CC: I was shocked. I think the first time we saw that advertising was in a full page advert in the New York Times. I’ll tell you something that’s funny, so far with the merch for the show, there’s a lot of clever pieces, and there’s t-shirts that say ‘Swish’, ‘Faot’, ‘Mary’ and ‘Pansy’. Those t-shirts are far outselling everything else in the shop.
WC: What’s the audience reaction been to an unapologetically LGBTQ piece, but also the hard language being used of 1968? CC: During the first week of previews, there’s some things we expected and others we didn’t. You can hear people being hurt by or shocked by gay men using the word faot to describe themselves. I think that’s creating a space in the theatre for the audience to really start to drop into what it must or might have been like in 1968, and the level of selfloathing that men were living with – almost at no fault of their own.
WC: And working with this cast, it must be so much fun. It’s kind of like a gay Power Rangers.
CC: Yes. Avengers: Infinity Ball is what we’re calling it.
WC: Let’s talk about your character, Cowboy. What’s it like getting to tackle him nightly? CC: When I started working on Cowboy, I went into the history of what being a sex worker was like in New York, and what it was like for hustlers in the 60s and 70s. I was reading these great books, including one called City of Night, and it’s a first-person account of a hustler. I was shocked that in the 60s, boys were getting together and there was light drag and poppers being passed about. It felt like Silver Lake in LA in 2018, and when I went back to look at the original draft after creating downtown life in 1968, I saw so many parallels with my community and my groups of friends on the eastside of LA. That collapsed this separation that I think can happen when working on a piece like this, and I started living in the world of what I’ve been creating. What runs counterpoint to Cowboy being this street hustler is this incredible sweetness and the fact, here I am for the first time being welcomed in by a group of really nice guys. I’m having the time of my life. Everybody else is going through it and it can be rough to watch, but I’m so grateful to be in the room. Again, there’s a collapse between Charlie the actor and Cowboy where I’m bringing in my sense of appreciation about being there.
WC: He’s not really known for wearing that many clothes. Is Broadway a baring experience?
CC: Well... that was definitely part of what I’ve been working on. Actors are always in shape, but I went, “Oh God, I don’t know what they’re going to put me in. I don’t know what I’m going to be wearing.” I gained about 15 pounds and that was how I spent my Christmas break...
WC: Oh cute.
CC: Yeah... so cute.
WC: Who are your LGBTQ icons?
CC: Oh, gosh! There’s a range. James Baldwin in terms of the real, heroes. I love Gus Kenworthy and Adam Rippon. I’m so happy to see them be friends and show different types of gay men. I’m pumped by my generation and I love that Drag Race is becoming an even bier phenomenon. I’m really moved by some of the people who I’ve grown up with. I have a friend Adam Eli who is one of the founders of this organisation called Voices4 and they’ve carried the torch from a lot of the activists work in the 80s. To see this exploration of what it means to be queer and how having fun but standing for something can be one in the same means there’s hope in the world.
“I don’t actually think you come out once in your life, you come out again and again. ”