"And I'd like to believe that's true, you know, kind of showing gay people in this kind of light and - where it's not about that, it's just about the characters for the first time, like those shows were"
About this Quote
Hayes is describing a pivot that sounds modest but is actually a cultural power move: representation that refuses to behave like homework. The line is full of hedges ("I'd like to believe", "you know", "kind of"), and that softness matters. It signals how slippery the subject still is for mainstream TV and for an actor who’s been both a beneficiary and a lightning rod of sitcom visibility. He’s not thumping a podium; he’s negotiating a public expectation that gay characters must either educate the audience or justify their own existence.
The key phrase is "in this kind of light" followed by the correction: "it's not about that". He’s naming the old trap without saying it: the gay character as Issue, as plot device, as someone whose primary narrative function is to generate a lesson. Instead, Hayes points to an aspiration many viewers now take for granted but that took decades of sitcom trial-and-error to normalize: gayness as a fact of a character, not the whole thesis. The comparison to "those shows" nods to a lineage of ensemble comedies that made room for queerness inside the everyday rhythms of jokes, jobs, friendships, and petty conflict.
Subtextually, he’s also defending comedy itself. When a show can let gay characters be messy, funny, sometimes wrong, it’s treating them like everyone else: not protected symbols, not convenient villains, just people written with enough confidence that their sexuality doesn’t have to carry the entire moral weight of the episode. That’s the real "first time" he’s reaching for: not visibility, but casual belonging.
The key phrase is "in this kind of light" followed by the correction: "it's not about that". He’s naming the old trap without saying it: the gay character as Issue, as plot device, as someone whose primary narrative function is to generate a lesson. Instead, Hayes points to an aspiration many viewers now take for granted but that took decades of sitcom trial-and-error to normalize: gayness as a fact of a character, not the whole thesis. The comparison to "those shows" nods to a lineage of ensemble comedies that made room for queerness inside the everyday rhythms of jokes, jobs, friendships, and petty conflict.
Subtextually, he’s also defending comedy itself. When a show can let gay characters be messy, funny, sometimes wrong, it’s treating them like everyone else: not protected symbols, not convenient villains, just people written with enough confidence that their sexuality doesn’t have to carry the entire moral weight of the episode. That’s the real "first time" he’s reaching for: not visibility, but casual belonging.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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