Jump to content

Closeted (gay) actors formerly on the soaps


DNBursky

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 509
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Members

Wait, the guy who played Snapper and Mitch Blake was gay?! I had no idea lol. Such a good looking and talented guy. In retrospect it shocks me that Y&R never brought him back like in the 90s considering he had such success on Another World. He was a great leading man from what I saw on that show.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

William Gray Espy was HUGELY popular on Y&R, even more than he was on AW. The trouble was, he openly admitted that he felt confined on daytime TV and did not enjoy working in the medium. He put his fist through a wall once while working on Y&R, out of frustration. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

He had kept his orientation quiet, himself, and had steadfastly refused to talk about his personal life with the press. Dano took it upon herself to out him in an interview, laughing about how he was not thrilled with their kissing scenes and how shaking hands instead would be more his preference.

 

 

No. Espy was a HUGE megastar and a prime reason why the show became a hit. He soared right to the top of all the readers' polls in the soap press. There was a tremendous backlash when he was replaced. Hasselhoff never attained the same popularity. You should have read some of the letters to the editors in the soap mags of the day. It was similar to Rosemary Prinz being replaced by Phoebe Dorin on ATWT. Fans were livid.

 

Espy never returned because he refused to do so. He only accepted the role of AW for a few years because he wanted to be in NY. He did not like the grind of daytime TV and made that VERY clear.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

Well, he originally agreed to appear on AW in a short-term capacity (Mitch Blake was intended to be a villain), because NBC wanted to capitalize on his immense popularity (the way ABC had lured Rosemary Prinz to ABC for the first six months of AMC). Later, the network offered him big buck$ to return for a longer contract. In interviews, however, Espy openly admitted that he was only there for the money and the ability to make a living in NY. Rosemary Prinz loathed working on ATWT, by her own admission, but played Penny Hughes for 12 straight years for similar reasons. Back in those days, NBC was known for paying their actors a lot higher salaries than the east-coast ABC soaps or Y&R. But the reason Espy kept coming and going was because he just didn't really want to be there.

Edited by vetsoapfan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Epsy did visit in 2003 but it was short

I know Brian Kerwin hated his time as Greg at YR but enjoyed being OLTL''s Charlie

 

I believe Wings Hauser (Greg) also had issues with YR

Edited by John
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

Kerwin once said that while he was playing Greg Foster on Y&R, the producers came to him out of the blue and announced that they were going to give the character an extended rest, meaning that Kerwin was about to be unemployed.

 

He asked if the character was scheduled to return to the canvas later on, and they said yes, so his next, logical question was, "When Greg Foster returns to the show in six months, a year, whatever, am I going to be playing him?"

 

The producers hemmed and hawed and replied, "Well, we'll certainly CONSIDER you for am audition...."

 

Kerwin was angry because it was a wishy-washy way of firing him. He would rather have been told flat-out that TPTB were firing him instead of leaving him with false hope about a possible return.

 

Unfortunately for Kerwin, he was the second-worst actor in the role. (Being bland and colorless, he was not as repulsive as Wings Hauser, whose casting as Greg Foster still boggles my mind.)

Edited by vetsoapfan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



  • Recent Posts

    • Thanks!  I compiled the list and posted it for the 59th anniversary in November, but just made the updates now for the couple of new cast members we've had since then! Didn't realize until I did the update that Peyton is the first-ever contract actor born in Nevada, so that's another state off the 0 list!
    • What I love about this story is that I can empathize with both Lulu's point of view AND Lois's point of view. I can understand why Lulu thinks it's important for the truth to come out and why she feels a moral obligation to let Dante know he has a son. But these good intentions have gotten all mixed up with her hatred for BLQ, and so she's going about it like a self-righteous bully who hasn't thought through all the consequences of this reveal. And I can understand Lois's thought process keeping this secret. She couldn't bear to give her grandson away to strangers, and so she arranged an adoption that kept him in the family. From her perspective, it's worked out beautifully because as Gio grew up as a "Palmieri cousin", he got to know his father Dante, his mother Brook Lynn, and his grandfather Sonny. She just had the hubris to believe that she could play God and keep the secret forever.  Maybe it's just getting to see Cynthia Watros and Laura Wright in full-on catfight mode a few days ago, but the show is starting to remind me of Guiding Light in its heyday, where most of the drama comes from the interactions of long-running characters who are likeable in some ways but have enough fatal flaws that they create their own problems. That's a sharp contrast for the way GH has generally been written since the JFP era, where most of the drama comes from external threats: supervillians, Sweeps month disasters, the mob shootout of the week. 
    • Wow, @JAS0N47, that list of states was impressive! And I never knew that James Read hailed from near me! (I was born and raised in a nearby city, about 15 minutes away!) (Liked him since he played Murphy Michaels on Remington Steele when I was a kid. As an older kid, I also loved him on North and South!)
    • Oh, I remember this vividly! So trippy to see Mike Brady as a devil-worshiping judge. LOL! (With the mustache and curly hair in some pics, Reed seemed to have a surface resemblance to early-Jeopardy Alex Trebek!)
    • This makes Karen, now this & a guy on Facebook named Brent Costel. Sony is really deleting so many files. 
    • Tracy is going to be excited but only if she is no longer under arrest. Where is Marty when he is needed?! But, in case he is truly out of pocket, then where the dickens is Scott Baldwin? Scotty, Tracy needs you. And you know how she is.
    • I’m so excited to see Tracy’s reaction when she finds out Gio is the great grandson she was wanting Jason to find. 
    • I think Lulu has had a point. Gio is Rocco's half-brother. Rocco is Lulu's son. And, she is still in love with Dante. She tried to get Brook Lynn to be forthcoming. Then she gave Lois the same chance. It was an accident that the two women were screaming at each other enough so that Gio heard every single stinking word they said.
    • Please register in order to view this content

      And Leslie looked good in that leather.
    • Love inspector Kat still doing a better job than the police.    Oh Leslie so delusional and I love every moment of it.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy