Scott Lowell
Mike: Yeah, here we go folks. We're back and our first guest, ladies and gentlemen - our first guest is one of the stars of the controversial series Queer As Folk, which airs on Showcase television. Please welcome Scott Lowell.
[applause and cheering]
(Scott waves to crowd, points to a section of the audience and does a little bow)
Mike: Scott Lowell, ladies and gentlemen. I must commend you. That's a great show.
Scott: Thank you.
Mike: I like it - it's a very courageous show. We've had Hal Sparks on, many people from the show on, and you, like every other actor who's been on this show, is not gay.
Scott: It's amazing.
Mike: Yeah.
Scott: And yet we go and kiss men for money.
Mike: Yeah. This role is a bit of a stretch for you guys.
Scott: Yeah, it is, but in some ways, not, you know. As soon as I saw the script I immediately related to this guy. He lives in a world where he is not as young and beautiful as everyone else around him, and...
Mike: The world I live in.
[laughter]
Scott: You understand it, then. It's the world I live in out in Los Angeles, so I fully related to it, so it wasn't so peculiar to me.
Mike: It's true, man. Los Angeles. Somebody prettier is always going to come walking around that corner.
Scott: It's a different food chain.
Mike: It's an unbelievable place. They have things like PhotoMats where you can get plastic surgery.
Scott: Is that right?
Mike: Yeah, it's like you pull in in your car, it's like drive-through plastic surgery. It's amazing.
Scott: [laughs] Make me look like my license?
Mike: My brother lives there. He's lived there fifteen years. He sits in the sun all day long. He looks like a purse with ears. It's unbelievable.
Scott: [laughs] Do you carry him as carry on luggage?
[audience laughter]
Mike: He sits there...The ozone, you know, there's a hole in the ozone, the UV rays are killing people left, right, and centre, and my brother sits in his backyard in Los Angeles, with a piece of tin foil under his chin, trying to catch it all. It's unbelievable, I've never seen anything like it.
Scott: He wants to turn himself into JiffyPop ® Popcorn.
Mike: That's right!
Scott: His face can go (exploding sound)
Mike: Now, are there any surprises going on with your character this season? You've got the second season coming up.
Scott: Yeah, the second season starts airing up here in Canada on the twenty-first of January on Showcase.
[audience applause]
Scott: January sixth down in the States, and yeah, we've got a lot of new things coming up this season. I can't give away too much, wouldn't want to do that but, major, major life....
Mike: Do you sleep with men?
[ laughter]
Scott: Mike. . .Come on! [laughing]
Mike: I love that show!
[Scott laughs]
Mike: Hal Sparks was on and I told him if you squint it's good porn.
Scott: [laughing] It's true! You can learn a thing or two...
Mike: I love these chicks with the short hair!
Scott: Exactly! I never knew I loved short, small breasted women so much. But, dammit...[closes eyes tightly]...I do!
[laughter]
Mike: I dunno, maybe it's just me again.
[more laughter]
Mike: You brought a clip with you.
Scott: Yes, I did. I brought a clip from the first season. This clip is from an episode where Peter Paige's character Emmett, who's been on your show before; who is, perhaps, the gayest of the gay characters on the show, decides through a pact with God, that he's going to go straight and joins a religious organization called "See The Light," and after many episodes trying to get him to stop trying to turn straight, myself and Hal Sparks' character give up and just want to let him know that we're kind of releasing him, and that's pretty much what this clip is about.
Mike: All right. Let's take a look at this.
[shows clip]
Ted: . . . And since God is love, and God doesn't make mistakes, then you must be exactly the way he wants you to be. The way he intended you to be. And that goes for every person, every planet, every mountain, every grain of sand, every song, every tear . . . and every faggot.
[applause and cheering]
Scott: I thought Orin would cry like he did for....
[Scott Reeves from The Young and The Restless was a guest the night before and showed a clip referring to the death of his character on the show. Orin, the band leader, is a fan of Y&R and follows the storylines so he was quite moved (*g*) by the clip Scott Reeves had shown]
Orin: I'm not that deeply into that tune.
Scott: You done with the crying thing now? I was weeping myself with you.
Mike: I weep every time I see it.
Scott: [laughs]
Mike: Now, this is an acting job. But this is not how you started in show business. I understand you actually worked on the Jenny Jones show?
Scott: I did. I was in desperate need of money while living in Chicago and a friend of mine had me come in and audition to do audience warm-up for the Jenny Jones show, and I did that for about a season and a quarter.
Mike: What's audience warm-up on a show like that? Do you blacken your teeth?
[laughter]
Scott: It's a lot of 'ca-ca/pee-pee' jokes. I mean, you're not dealing with the brightest bulbs on the shelf. It was very interesting. My second day on the show, she shares a green room, actually, with the Jerry Springer show which shoots right across the hall.
Mike: No! They're in the same studio?
Scott: They're in the same hallway, so it's kind of like freak central, and on my second day on the job, I was looking for someone in one of our green rooms and I accidentally walked in to one of Jerry's and the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan was about as far as you are from me right now, in full regalia, and I just kind of opened the door and went ‘Sorry.' I figured it was not the best place for a nice Jewish boy to be at the time. So I realized I was in for a hell of a time at the Jenny Jones show. It did prove to me, though, that those shows do have a purpose and that is they are the modern day freak shows. I don't know if freak shows were as big up here as they were down in the States but it gave the people . . .
Mike: *This* is the freak show.
[laughter]
Scott: This is as freaky as it gets? No, I mean, it gave people a chance to feel superior to someone. Those who are kind of at the lower end of the social strata, and I would watch the same people come to see a taping of those shows over and over again, beaten down by the world, a lot of them unemployed, from the housing projects in Chicago, and I would just see venom rise in them as they would be able to stand up and say, "You're a terrible mother," you know, and, "You're sleeping with your son - that's disgusting!", and finally they get to feel better about themselves in some way and so, sociologically....
Mike: By the way, I agree. Sleeping with your son is disgusting!
[laughter]
Scott: It depends what the mom looks like, Mike.
[laughter]
Mike: Speaking of moms, your parents -- what was their reaction to the show?
Scott: My folks have been great. They're very supportive. My sister is gay and so it's kind of been an important part of our family. Actually though, I was adopted, and I found my birth parents just a few years ago.
Mike: Oh, that's great.
Scott: They're still together and it turns out they're Pentecostal, so their response was a little different. My birth mother said to me, "Well, it's not exactly the kind of thing we can put up on the church bulletin board, is it?"
[laughter]
Scott: I said no, but they're cool about it. I just send them pictures of the show, I don't send them articles. ‘Oh, here's me with a haircut!'
Mike: And your birth parents are still together?
Scott: Still together. My birth father is 87, my birth mother about 67, and they live down in Atlanta, Georgia, and they're still together. Sweet, wonderful people. It's been an interesting trip with them.
Mike: Yeah, I know, but they're still together?
[laughter]
Scott: They're still together! How does that make me feel?
Mike: Obviously you haven't thought this out completely!
[more laughter] Scott: No. I've thought it through. I know. It's because I was ugly, Mike. You don't have to get into it.
Mike: Oh yeah..they're happily married....
Scott: Isn't it time for the animals now? Don't you have to bring the animals out?
Mike: We're going to do that. I want to thank you. Scott Lowell, ladies and gentlemen!
[laughter and applause]
Mike: We'll be right back with Zoo Diaries.
