Doug Savant spoke about the challenges he faced off-screen during his time at ‘Melrose Place.’ He explained why he refused to come out as heterosexual while playing a gay character on television.
“When we were shooting all those things and the trailers for the show, I said to Sam, our publicist, ‘Do you care to talk about how we’re going to handle this going forward, that there was a gay character?'” he told his former costars Laura Leighton, Courtney Thorne-Smith, and Daphne Zuniga on their Still The Place podcast. “I knew it was exceptional, and I thought people would be interested. But she goes, ‘Well, no, it’s not a big deal. You’re an actor, you’re just playing a character.’ And I said, ‘Oh, clearly she doesn’t get it.'”
Savant played the gay character Matt Fielding in six of ‘Melrose Place’s seven seasons, but in real life, he’s straight. He intuited early on that this might present challenges. Eventually, he was called into a meeting with ‘Melrose Place’ creator Darren Star and the show’s PR team, who told him, “‘We don’t see why it’s a big deal. Why wouldn’t you just say, ‘Well, it shouldn’t matter, but I’m heterosexual.’ I said ‘No.’ I was not going to make my living playing a gay man, but then say, ‘Oh, I would never be associated with that.'”
Matt Fielding avoided many of the stereotypes that plague gay characters in the media – his stories weren’t tragic, he wasn’t a closet case of self-loathing, and he wasn’t the undeveloped gay best friend. However, Savant’s character famously never had a love scene or kissed another man for six seasons. A gay kiss was planned for an episode in 1994, but the network reportedly backed out at the last minute, switching instead to another character’s reaction to the kiss.
Savant explained, “He was the only gay character on television at the time.” He continued, “At the time [Matt] was the only one. So there was tremendous interest.”
“I went out and I was asked, in every conceivable way, whether I was straight or gay. And I would then say, ‘Well, it’s interesting, just that that’s the assumption… No one asked [Andrew Shue], ‘You’re playing Billy, does that mean you’re straight?'” He added, “‘What do you have in common with the character?’ I’d say, ‘Well, we’re the same height and we both have a sense of humor.'”
Savant feels that the show’s handlers and producers thought “it would be somehow more palatable to the American public if they could avail themselves of the reality that I was actually a straight man. And I thought that was morally reprehensible… I just couldn’t morally bring myself to say, ‘I’m going to come to work and I’m going to play this character, but I should distance myself from it.’ My intention with Matt was to say he is your son, he is your brother, he is your friend. He is every man, he’s your neighbor. He’s a regular guy who happens to be gay.”
Douglas Savant is known for his roles as Matt Fielding in the Fox prime-time soap opera ‘Melrose Place,’ Tom Scavo in the ABC comedy-drama ‘Desperate Housewives,’ and as Sgt. O’Neal in ‘Godzilla.’
