Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto on the significance of new Netflix film The Boys in the Band

Given that many of the original cast never came out, and died later of Aids, the modern stars are well aware of the legacy of a piece that was among the first to portray the lives of gay men

Tue, 29 Sep, 2020 - 20:00

Esther N McCarthy

It was the show that made history in US theatre, the 1968 play that was groundbreaking in its portrayal of a group of gay men.

Regarded as a cultural game changer, The Boys in the Band helped inspire the Stonewall protests and the rising of the gay rights movement in America just a year later.

But many of the gay actors who starred in it opted not to come out until after it debuted, and saw their careers suffer in a society and industry that was not fully willing to be open to them.

Now a cast of openly gay actors led by Zachary Quinto and Jim Parsons are bringing the story to the screen, two years after reviving it on the Broadway stage, as a feature film.

“I think the fact that this play, this film, is populated by a cast of openly gay, successful, thriving, integrated men is a real testament to how far we've come,” says Quinto.

“In the late 1960s, no one had really seen anything like this, this play existed at such a specific time in cultural history, just before the Stonewall uprising led to the gay rights movement, and subsequently, just at the advent of the sexual revolution that accompanied that, before the Aids epidemic, which obviously then defines gay identity for generations.”

He believes that playwright Mart Crowley, who died earlier this year, put gay characters and their stories front and centre in a manner that had never before been seen on stage. Before that, a gay man’s sexuality would be merely hinted at.

“I think Mart unwittingly captured such a specific and unique cultural experience of what it meant to be gay at this time. And I think it remains a bellwether for how much progress we've been able to achieve in a relatively short amount of time. I think it also exists as a call to arms to remind us that we can never take any of that for granted.

“I don't think we can ever back off of the need to continue moving forward and advocating for the rights of all members of the LGBTQ plus community. And I think that's reflective of the time we're living in today.”

An excellent cast propels director Joe Mantello’s film, the second movie adaptation of the play. Set in an upmarket apartment in New York city in 1968, it tells the story of a group of gay men planning to enjoy a birthday celebration.

Zachary Quinto in The Boys In The Band on Netflix.

Jim Parsons, who previously played Sheldon Cooper in hit comedy The Big Bang Theory, plays Michael, in whose house the party takes place. When someone from his past unexpectedly shows up at the party, much drama ensues - lots of it in the form of biting dialogue and witty put downs.

Yet when he was first offered the script for the play in 2018, to mark the original show’s 50th anniversary, Parsons says he was initially unsure whether to get on board.

“I was kind of taken aback when I first read it and wasn’t sure. But I talked to Joe Mantello. And Joe told me that he and (producer) Ryan Murphy had talked and that Ryan had asked him to think of this through the lens of like an Edward Albee play, and specifically like a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf-type thing, and there was something about that, framing it through that lens. It started to make sense.

And what I think is interesting was, now that we've worked on it, one of the most remarkable things about this piece was that it was the first time a piece had been solely about the interior lives - literally, in a home - of gay people.

“That had never been showcased before in that way. And one of the things was it was in response to was that gay writers like Edward Albee, or Tennessee Williams, were writing about gay issues, but through the lens of heterosexuals. And so Mark challenged himself to basically say: ‘Well, I’m going to tell about gay life through gay people’.”

While huge strides have been taken in society’s attitudes to gay people since 1968, Parsons feels prejudice can now take more nuanced forms.

“I feel like a lot of the slings and arrows of society that these gay men in America, in the late '60s were dealing with, still exists in much more subtle forms. At least that's how I have felt as we've gone through this. It was just such a different and more harsh world in existence, then. I believe close to half the original cast ended up dying of Aids.

Jim Parsons in The Boys In The Band. The former Big Bang Theory star has recovered from his brush with Covid-19.

“Things are obviously progressed, and much better. There's just no doubt about it. And so the more overt ways of discriminating against gays are just not there anymore. It's much more subtle. And so it's easier for someone like myself, a gay man in the year 2020, to not pay conscious mind to the the more subtle slings and arrows that I have felt over the years. It has turned out to be a very important thing to me as a human.

“I feel a celebratory sense of responsibility almost that we're doing this again, and doing it the way that we are, as an honour to these men whose shoulders we stand on.”

Like many actors and others working in the arts, Parsons has spent the past six months out of work as film and TV production was halted around the world. On a personal level, he’s also experienced the very real fear of a Covid-19 diagnosis. Both he and his husband contracted the disease, he tells me.

I got sick very early on, Todd and I both did, we didn't know what it was until we were losing our sense of smell. So the first days were really scary, because this was very early on and the news was just dark as hell.

"Anyway, once we got through that, and we were lucky that we had medium to mild cases, I tried to do things.

“I was taking a painting class in person before the quarantine. And I tried to continue that on Zoom for a while and God it just wasn't the same. And then I signed up for a couple of different writing classes online. I enjoyed that for a couple of months actually.

“I think I've discovered through my forays into other artistic endeavours that I really love acting and it may be the only artistic thing I was put on this earth to do because it's the only thing I seem to be to stick to without having to kick myself to get it going. I'm missing that more than I know, I think.”