Ron: We did feel we had to match the British or better them. We also had to identify it as our own show. So we had those two objectives to do and sometimes that was very difficult to be your own show and also make sure you're being respectful of the source.
Dan informs the cast at the reading that StarTV is present. The director runs through the script for the episode (205), which opens with a Drag King show at Woody's where three female Elvis impersonators are singing "Follow That Dream" while the gang is drinking beers and watching the show. The mood is light, and there are scattered chuckles as the cast flips through their pages.
Many of the actors are eating lunch and drinking bottled water. Randy, wearing reading glasses, sips on a Pepsi.
Initial Reactions
Hal: When I read the initial script I knew it was going to be big. I knew it was going to be shocking, I knew it was going to shift a lot of people in a positive sense, I knew it was going to shock a lot of people and drive them further into their negative feelings toward the gay community.
Michelle: I was shocked when I saw two men on screen making love; it was the only opportunity I've had to see two men making love because I've never seen that and I don't rent gay men's porn or anything, so I've never seen it before.
Randy: I was impressed because I had already done one audition with a few sides and you know... everybody knowing my age, and everyone warning me about how shocking it is, saying ‘be careful, be careful.'
Scott: When I first read the script of the first episodes, I was really shocked and scared. When I realized how graphic the show was going to be.
Ron: I think it's a pretty ‘in-your-face' daring, uncensored version of gay life for a certain group of people at a certain age.
Sharon: There have been comedies about homosexuality, but it's the first drama. It's the first show that takes homosexuality and the gay community seriously. Even though we do have a lot of laughs on the show, it takes a very serious look at the gay world, and these five extraordinary boys and the two women.
Hal: I play Michael. Being gay is probably the smallest slice of his life; his focus is really on his friends and taking care of his mother and being a comic book freak. Storyline-wise, Michael is the nucleus of the group. He is the person that we can all relate through to see the other characters.
Gale: The character I play on Queer As Folk, Brian, is a thirty-year old advertising executive from Pittsburgh.
Dan: Here's a character who is very sexual, very masculine, his energy is very, very masculine, and I think that people at first were very threatened by him because he's a character you've never seen before.
Scott: He's the oldest of the group, he's 33, and he's stuck in a difficult place of being in a world that values beauty and youth, and he has neither of those, and still trying to compete and unfortunately doesn't win very often.
Peter: I play Emmett Honeycutt, who's certainly the most outrageous and flamboyant member of our little band of brothers. He's really happy and really out of all the guys on the show likes himself better than anybody.
Randy: The component that Justin plays on the show, he's the young character, the adolescent. He starts the series at 17, he's 18 now, and he has a relationship with the lead character Brian.
Dan: Here's a kid, who wasn't one of these kids running around thinking he was gay and wanting to commit suicide. If anyone's a predator, he went after Brian. He's thrilled with his life. I mean, this is something... all he had to do was cross the street and go to that bar for the first time, and he's home.
Thea: Lindsay is an art teacher, and she's been in a relationship for quite a few years now with Melanie Marcus, who is the love of her life.
Michelle: She's honest, and human, and passionate, and she looooves Lindsay.
