Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC

Robert Greenblatt, NBC’ s new chairman and president of programming, might not think there is anything remarkable about his ascendancy to the top of the Peacock network, but then again he’s pretty modest about all of his achievements. However, given that Greenblatt is the first out gay man to head a broadcast network, AfterElton.com is inclined to disagree with him rather emphatically. In fact, we're more than happy to say we think his new position is an important step for GLBT visibility.

Greenblatt’s latest promotion is just another in a long list of achievements including, after this Saturday, the Stephen F. Kolzak Award, which GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) will bestow on Greenblatt for his contributions toward eliminating homophobia. (The award is named after the successful Los Angeles casting director who worked to fight AIDS-phobia and homophobia in Hollywood.)

While few outside of the Hollywood community are likely familiar with Greenblatt, his influence on GLBT visibility in popular culture is profound. Among his many producing television credits, the most recognizable to gay viewers would likely be his work as an executive producer on HBO’s Six Feet Under.

In 2003, Greenblatt became president of Showtime, which not only saw the network grow dramatically in almost every metric during his seven year tenure, but also saw the network build on its already queer-friendly reputation with shows such as Weeds, United States of Tara, Nurse Jackie and most recently, Shameless.

AfterElton.com recently had the chance to talk with Greenblatt about his being out in Hollywood, straight actors playing gay, gay actors playing straight and how he'd feel if his network received a failing grade from GLAAD.

AfterElton: Congratulations on winning the Stephen F. Kolzak award from GLAAD. What does that mean to you?

Bob Greenblatt: I think that the GLAAD organization represents such a great thing for the community. To give me this award in Stephen’s name is a real honor.

AE: Were you surprised when they called up and said you’re this year’s winner?

BG: I’m always surprised about that sort of thing. I was surprised and flattered and really happy to accept it because I do think that I’ve always tried to bring a whole diverse world to many of the shows that I’ve done. And I’m really happy that it’s being recognized here.

AE: Does being the first out broadcast network president mean something particular to you?

BG: I don’t know if there is any bigger meaning to ascribe to that. All I know is it was the right moment for me to do a job like this. I think it gives me a really unique platform, but I don’t know if there is any other meaning except that I happen to be the right guy for the job and I happen to be gay.

AE: Personally, I think it’s a mark of progress because we now have openly gay people like yourself in such high-powered positions. Granted, Hollywood has always had powerful gay people, but many of them weren’t out. I also think it says something about where we are today that your being president isn’t a particularly big deal.

BG: I would say yes to that. I have never ever been held back or questioned in any of my career steps that I’ve gone through because of my orientation. Nor have I seen it with anyone else. I mean, I think Hollywood is very open. In all the executive positions, executive producers, writers, directors, I don’t think there is any sort of negativity on that front at all behind the camera. I think that it’s more about what’s in front of the camera and that’s where it gets tricky, you know?

AE: [laughs] It gets very tricky. Under your tenure at Showtime the network was incredibly successful in pretty much ever metric there is and it was also incredibly gay friendly. Can you speak to your time there and how progressive that network was?

BG: I won’t take credit for putting Showtime in that position because it was really there before I got there. When I walked in the door, Queer as Folk was already on the air and I think it was three seasons in and they broke some great ground by putting that on the air. I mean incredibly so. Also The L Word was already a pilot that had been made and went to series before I got there. I actually put it on the air because I had taken over by the time it launched, but I was not the architect of either of those shows. I was the beneficiary of them. Showtime was way ahead of the game. Showtime had that show Brothers on in the 80s.

AE: I remember.

BG: They had been doing movies with LGBT characters and scenes, and Soldier’s Girl had aired before I arrived, so Showtime was way ahead of the game. I give Showtime a lot of credit in this area. It was great because I was simultaneously doing Six Feet Under with Alan Ball and the network was very much open and in tune with alternate lifestyles and all kinds of diversity.

It was a real joy to go in there without any restrictions whatsoever. Showtime had cultivated a very great gay and lesbian audience which I felt we should just keep lining because you know, they are there and because that spoke to me personally. I think they really covered the notion of shows that were filled with gay and lesbian characters. I don’t think you’ll see another full ensemble of gay and lesbian characters again.

What I tried to do instead of continuing that, I tried to populate the shows, very organically, with gay and lesbian characters along side of straight characters. It just became very organic and the audience was very open to all of that and it was really kind of liberating and a joy to do.

AE: How do you translate what you just said about organic gay characters to NBC? Obviously NBC gave us Will & Grace…

BG: I’m going to do the same thing. It’s not a network that has Queer as Folk and The L Word on the air, but like you mentioned, it is the network that created Will & Grace and that was ground-breaking and the network did not fall apart at the seams. That show was hugely popular. That says to me that this audience, which is potentially more sophisticated, more upscale than the other networks, is really open to that kind of thing.

What we’re doing is integrating characters into several of our pilots. I don’t think we have the best track record up to this point compared to other networks as far as representation now that Will & Grace is gone. I just found a number of pilots — now who knows which will go to series — in the pilots there are organically several gay and lesbian characters.

Eric McCormack, Sean Hayes and Debra Messing from Will & Grace

AE: I know there is Playboy, which I find very interesting…

BG: Also starring a woman named Amber Heard who is playing heterosexual but Amber is an out lesbian actress. I think it’s a matter of young people feeling less pressure than older actors did. I mean, she’s in her 20s and she came out. I think it’s cool that’s she’s part of that mix. There are several shows and it’s probably true that the shows that have the gay and lesbian characters and other kinds of alternative characters are by and large probably created by gay or lesbian writers because that just makes sense, right?

It is part of their experience so it’s probably easier for them to put it into a show but there are a lot of gay and lesbian show creators in the universe. From Alan Ball on down.

Playboy was created by Chad Hodge, who is gay.

AE: I didn't know that about Playboy.

BG: It’s not so usual to think about homosexuality being a part of that world, and I think it’s interesting dramatically to look at that in the early 60s. It gives it a different resonance than if it were just present day.

AE: Is it a little more important to you as the president of NBC now that it does have a better track record and have some success with these gay characters?

BG: Yes, it is very important not because I’m worried about a report record or somebody looking at our company and making a judgment about it, but because I think we’re in a business where we are reflecting the world that we live in. You can’t do it all in one show, but if you look at our schedule, we will be covering lots of experiences and lots of kinds of characters. Young, old, gay, straight, black and the list goes on and on.

I don’t have a secret mission to forward the agenda of LGBT community. I just think it’s the world that we live in. It’s certainly the world I live, you know? All my friends aren’t gay and so why don’t shows reflect that kind of mix?

Greenblatt at the TCA when he wa president of Showtime

AE: It’s interesting you mention Amber in Playboy, because while gay actors have made a lot of progress of late, I just wrote an article examining when we are going to see an out male actor playing a heterosexual romantic lead. Do you think we’re getting close to that? Do we need a gay network president to say, “Hey, we can do this!" to make it happen?

BG: I think we’re getting closer to it. I think we’ll get even closer the more out gay actors there are. I think that is still a process that is slow to happen. I think there is still a fear that they are going to limit themselves in how they are seen and how they are cast. I think it’s a little bit like the chicken or the egg. The more they come out, the more we’ll feel like, “Oh, there are so many great gay actors to think about.” I guess the question is would Neil Patrick have been cast in that role if he was out? You know, he wasn’t out yet when he got that role, right?

AE: No, he wasn’t out yet.

BG: It does tend to be a little bit of baggage when an actor walks in the room. I think that will gradually start to disappear. When will Sean Hayes be cast as the romantic love interest in comedy or drama? I don’t know. I think it’s probably easier to get that done if there isn’t a very memorable gay character that sort of comes with the actor.

If someone is really well known and you know them from their previous work, and we all have to suspend our disbelief and if it was a very memorable gay character that they played it’s just a little harder to say, “Oh that guy, that really believable gay character is not at all any part of this straight character that he is playing.” I think it will be easier for actors who are less known to get those parts.

AE: Would you like to see that happen under your watch?

BG: I think it would be great, but again and maybe this is not the right thing to say, but I don’t think that, certainly is not a big agenda that I have, that I want to move the needle on gay actors getting straight romantic parts. It would be great but I don’t know that it’s a mission of mine. Or should I say, I don’t know if that’s going to happen more often because I happen to be gay.

AE: When did you come out?

BG: Sort of in high school and in college, but I don’t think it was ever a big secret to anyone because I was always involved in the theater. I worked in the theater when I was in high school and in theater education, and I’d say half of the people working in the theater, at least the men, were already gay. I don’t think it was ever a great secret to people.

AE: So you didn’t have a lot of that angst that most folks had back coming out in the 1970s and 80s?

BG: I had my own personal angst about it but it never sort of held me back. I never tried to portray that I was straight and dating women or getting engaged and then having some kind of change of heart or something.

Michael C. Hall and Matthew St. Patrick from Six Feet Under

AE: Looking back over your time in television are you surprised by how much things have changed with gay characters on TV?

BG: I’m really surprised that things haven’t changed more. I mean I know there is some really organic stuff that happens and nobody bats an eyelash like on Brothers & Sisters where one of the brothers is gay and he has a partner, and scenes where they can be in bed together and they can kiss and advertisers don’t fall out and stuff like that. I know there is that, but I would have thought there would be more gay characters on all the networks. Especially with the progression that was made on cable and premium cable.

AE: Some networks have received failing grades from GLAAD for having no gay characters at all.

BG: [laughs]

AE: I actually give NBC credit for what they have done in the past few years. You had Trauma, Mercy, Kings and Southland, so it’s not like NBC hasn’t tried.

BG: Right.

AE: Meanwhile, other networks haven’t even tried. As a gay man and network president what do you think of a network who has done nothing with gay visibility in their scripted programming?

BG: I think it is unfortunate if there are networks with failing grades. I just think it’s a shame that whoever is programming those networks that they don’t realize that that’s not the world that they live in. We live in a world where it’s [gay people are] just commonplace. To just continue to do shows where the characters are all homogeneous just doesn’t make any sense to me.

AE: What show that you’ve been involved with are you the most proud of?

BG: I so hate to choose favorites but I would have to say Six Feet Under for so many reasons. Not only for personally getting to work with people I love like Alan Ball and David Janollari as producers, but also what that show was saying about our world. You know, that very interesting and complex same-sex relationship with Keith and David and that was just satisfying on so many levels and just a great experience getting a show on the air.

AE: It was a great show. How involved were you with Shameless? And how pleased are you with the show’s success?

BG: I was very involved with Shameless. I developed the pilot, ordered it, was involved in the first season of storylines before I left the network and I’m thrilled with it. Again, there is a great example of a gay character in a whole gay storyline that’s just organic to a family.

If you have that many siblings in a family then the odds are somebody is going to be gay. God bless Paul Abbott who created this show in the UK and was involved in its move to the U.S. There was an outing story that was part of the pilot and ten years ago it would have been a trauma storyline, and in this case it was a dramatic storyline, with two brothers who came together and ended up being more bonded then they would have otherwise. I just love it!

There is a great gay storyline in there and I couldn’t be happier about it.

I feel the same way about the son in United States of Tara. You know, he just happens to be gay and the family is completely okay with it and I think that is a great message to send. The more we can send these messages to the world where people are still closeted and conservative, the more we can send these messages that this is just part of life, that it’s okay, parents react positively, siblings react positively, that’s a great message to send.

There are five or six characters in that show and one of them is gay and it’s a great way to tell that story without having to get on the soapbox. Sometimes when you get on the soap box people go, ‘Uh I don’t want to watch’, rather than just saying, “Hey, that’s just part of the world.”

And here’s the flip side of the argument — it’s often difficult for similar reasons because these actors don’t want to be pigeon-holed, but it’s hard to get straight actors to play gay. I don’t want to take jobs away from gay actors playing gay roles, but I think [we should hire] the best actor for the job. Keir Gilchrist [from United States of Tara] didn’t for a second flinch at any parts of that character’s story. He just embraced it, maybe because he’s so young.

The same with Shameless. The kids who were happy to play that. I believe that Keir is straight, it doesn’t matter to me, but I believe for a young person to play those emotional things, you have to be a pretty extraordinary person and I think we got so lucky with some of those actors.

Keir Gilchrist (United States of Tara), Cameron Monaghan (Shameless)

Same as Queer as Folk, some of those actors were straight and portraying very frank sexual situations. Hal Sparks did a great job playing that character and that was probably a challenge for him. We could talk about this for hours, but I’m very proud of Shameless and the United States of Tara and all these shows.