Melrose Place star Doug Savant explains why he refused to come out as straight while playing gay character on TV

Doug Savant is opening up about the offscreen challenges he faced
during his time on Melrose Place.

"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 on six of Melrose Place's
seven seasons, but in real life, he's straight. He intuited before
anyone else that therein might lie a problem. 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.'"
Doug Savant.
mikel roberts/Sygma via Getty

Matt Fielding avoided some of the stereotypical issues that plague
queer characters in media � his storylines weren't racked with tragedy,
he wasn't a self-hating closet case, and he wasn't the undeveloped gay
best friend. But Savant was notoriously never given a love scene � his
character never even kissed another man across six seasons. A same-sex
kiss was planned for a 1994 episode, but the network reportedly got
cold feet at the last minute, and cut away to another character's
reaction to the kiss to illustrate the kiss itself.

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Savant provided crucial context for the contemporary pressure
surrounding this character, noting "he was the only gay character at
that time in television. We had had Billy Crystal [in Soap], we were
about to have Mitchell Anderson on Party of Five, and Bill Brochtrup, a
friend of mine, on NYPD Blue. But at the time, [Matt] was the only one.
So there was an enormous amount of interest."

In addition to those that Savant mentions, other notable early LGBTQ+
roles include Al Corley's character on 1980s' soap Dynasty and Wilson
Cruz's character on My So-Called Life, which was the first queer
character to be played by an openly queer actor when it debuted two
years after Melrose Place. Savant's point is well-taken: with so few
representatives of a vulnerable demographic in the TV landscape, the
pressure was on to accord the character his requisite dignity.

How did Savant go about that? "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?'" Then when asked "'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.'"
Doug Savant in 2020.
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."

Despite having a relatively barren love life, Fielding was given some
of the series' most impactful storylines, from facing workplace
discrimination to seeking justice for a hate crime. As with the best
primetime teen soap stars, his character was killed off screen in a car
crash toward the series' end. Savant went on to play Tom Scavo for nine
years on Desperate Housewives, and has been married to his costar (and
pod interviewer) Laura Leighton since 1998.

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