Jonathan Taylor Thomas confronts rumors about his sexuality
David Migicovsky
Fresh from playing gay in Showtime's Common Ground, teen heartthrob Jonathan
Taylor Thomas comfortably confronts rumours about his own sexuality
By Dennis Hensley
From The Advocate, February 1, 2000
For many readers of The Advocate, seeing Jonathan Taylor Thomas on the cover
is not an entirely foreign concept. In the spring of 1998, the Internet was
suddenly rife with rumours that the then-16-year-old heartthrob, who was
winding up his eighth and last year playing Tim Allen's sarcastic son Randy
Taylor on the venerable sitcom Home Improvement, was gay and coming out in
the pages of this very magazine. The supposed tell-all interview did not
exist-for no other reason than the fact that Thomas is not gay.
But the Pennsylvania-born, California-bred Thomas himself is not spooked by
the word gay. Indeed, he embraces a major gay role in the new Showtime movie
Common Ground, an If These Walls Could Talk-style trio of vignettes about
what it's like to be homosexual in small-town America in the '50s, '70s, and
now. In the '70s-set portion, written by Tony award-winning gay playwright
Terrence McNally (Love! Valour! Compassion!), Thomas dives into the role of
Toby Anderson, a high school swimming star, who is wrestling with coming out
and with the violent homophobia of his teammates.
"Jonathan was up for everything," says Common Ground's out director, Donna
Deitch. "A great deal was demanded of him, and he was completely committed.
He even went for the Speedo."
And, rumour mill be damned, Thomas went for the interview with The Advocate.
Clad in jeans, a grey sweater, and a baseball cap, the straight-A high
school student-who, since his parents' divorce when he was 8, has been
raised with brother Joel by their mom, Claudine-discussed his take on gossip
and gays. What follows are outtakes from that interview, material not
included in the Q&A that appears in the published form of The Advocate but
is available exclusively here at advocate.com:
You're a senior in high school now. Do you wreak havoc on the underclassmen?
No. You know what, I'm kind of more sympathetic toward them because I
remember when I was a freshman, and, you know, I remember what it was like.
You know, pairing up with these big seniors and knowing, My God, they're
just gigantic, and I'm never going to be like that, and then sure enough
four years go by like that. So I kind of empathize with the position they're
in. So I'm nice to them. I like the underclassmen.
In Common Ground you got to do a '70s thing without sporting too many bad
clothes or hair.
Which was good. When I first read '70s, I was thinking bell bottoms, Afros,
all kinds of wild things. When I got up there and met with the wardrobe
department, I was quite pleased. I was like, OK, some cool sneakers, a
little bit of flare on the pants. Not too bad. A little boot cut. I can live
with that.
But you did have to wear a Speedo. That's a little brave.
Yeah, well, that wasn't something I was looking forward to. And, of course,
it was relatively minimal, which I'm glad.
The suit itself is minimal?
No! How much you see is minimal. The suit itself is minimal as well, but
that's the nature of the Speedo.
You play a bit of an overachiever. Can you relate to him?
I think so. That's what I liked about him. It comes back to drive, ambition.
This kid wants to be something. And he doesn't want to let other people's
hostilities and hatred and insecurities prevent him from being the best he
can be and living out his life as he wants to live it. Someone who didn't
have as strong a will or maybe wasn't as confident as Toby is might have
backed down [and] not come out.
What was it like doing the scene in the locker room when the other boys sort
of terrorize Toby for being gay?
It was a hard scene to do for a number of different reasons. Not only were
we filming late, it had been a long day. The physicality of the scene, and
we were working with five actors, including myself. And it's a stunt scene,
throwing punches, and whatnot. And none of us are stuntmen. So there's an
added pressure when you're dealing with throwing punches and you don't want
to get hit, you don't want to get hurt. You want to make the scene look as
realistic as possible. And then, it was just intense. The way it's shot as
well. It's sort of continuous, where there's-I get kind of pulled back into
the shower area and the camera keeps on swishing back and forth.
The implication is that Toby is raped.
It's up to the viewer to decide-what is their own personal torture? And they
can kind of associate that with what Toby must be going through. What would
be the nightmare for them? And that's what I kind of liked about it. We didn
't have to blatantly show exactly what was going on. It lets the viewer be
smart, use their imagination. And I think that's oftentimes a lot more
powerful in filmmaking, when you suggest things as opposed to showing them.
Because when you show something, there's only one interpretation: what is on
the screen. You allude to something, and it leaves the viewer to kind of go,
Wow. And they're forced to think about it and process it and imagine what
could be happening there. And certainly you know it's torture, it's
horrible, and this kid is being demeaned sexually, mentally-it's horrifying.
But that's the reality and the trauma and the torture of what this kid had
to endure.
What did you learn about yourself through this experience in Common Ground?
What it's like to feel isolated and alone and having no one to turn to. And
I think in filming that scene in the bathroom, I started to get it. I think
I can never fully comprehend it. But I think that I started to get a clearer
picture of what it may be like to be a young kid struggling with your
sexuality and not being able to go there. And it doesn't even have to be an
issue of sexuality. It could be anyone who's facing prejudice and hatred and
looking at society and thinking that everyone around you is against you. I
think that's a really horrifying picture. Where you literally have no one to
turn to. The one thing about Toby is that the one person he turns to
initially is his teacher, and even he denies him. And so the one person that
he thinks is like him and he can associate with and can really go to and
say, "This is who I am, I need you right now," slams the door in his face
initially. And so that is a very dark and cold place to be.
Speaking of dark places, you played Greg Brady's son in an early-'90s
revival of The Brady Bunch. What's your definitive Brady memory?
Florence Henderson. She's cool. She went to a Super Bowl and came back and
gave me a commemorative ball from that Super Bowl, and I thought that was
incredibly nice of her to be there. Out of all people.
So that rumour about Florence Henderson balling you.
[Laughs] That's exactly how these things start.
Jeg7777
> (snip)
>
> Speaking of dark places, you played Greg Brady's son in an early-'90s
> revival of The Brady Bunch. What's your definitive Brady memory?
> Florence Henderson. She's cool. She went to a Super Bowl and came back and
> gave me a commemorative ball from that Super Bowl, and I thought that was
> incredibly nice of her to be there. Out of all people.
>
> So that rumour about Florence Henderson balling you.
> [Laughs] That's exactly how these things start.
ANOTHER MENTAL PICTURE!!!!!!! AAIIEEEEEEE!!!
--
Joe
Nelson: What is this place?
Bart: Branson, Missouri. My dad says it's like Las Vegas if it were run by Ned
Flanders.