Jack McFarland has kicked the door open and dramatically slid right back into our hearts with the Will and Grace revival. Now in a recent interview with the man behind "Just Jack", Sean Hayes, has opened up about his past and struggles coming out.
While the character he plays is louder-than-life and the embodiment of living a proud life, Hayes struggled with coming to terms with his sexuality, even down to his early interests in theatre.
"I kept it hidden, the fact that I was in high school plays, from my brothers and my family," Hayes explained. "This is 1986, I associated, like society taught me, that theatre was for gays and sissies, things you were taught to be ashamed of."
Hayes came out to his family when he was 18-years-old at Thanksgiving. "My mum said I needed to go see a therapist," the 47-year-old revealed before saying she also wrote him a 10-page letter saying his sexuality was "not what God intended".
Still, Hayes' managed to get support from his family in subtle ways. When one of his brothers discovered he was going to be in a school play, Hayes felt like he had been found out.
"He was like 'what are you worried about?' and I said we have to wear makeup and he was like, 'yeah but I'm in football and we put makeup under our eyes', and I was like, that's really sweet. He tried, and I'll never forget that."
He also noted that after his mum began to have relationships and friendships with queer people her attitudes started to evolve, she began to realise there wasn't that much difference, and after a while became "so supportive and awesome".
Times may have changed since Hayes' coming out but the actor knew that despite appearances, there are still many people struggling with coming out much like he did.
"The truth of the matter is that we have tons of work to do still... people still don't quite understand, which is another great reason Will and Grace is back on the air."
"If you don’t have the words to explain it to your family, you can say, ‘Like Will and Grace,’ or ‘Like Ellen DeGeneres,’ or whoever's out in a public... there are so many more examples now to help people and give them tools to communicate to kids and to families that being gay is as normal as being straight."
After all that, Hayes just wanted people to know more than anything, queer people are just as uninteresting as straight people. "We're here, we're queer... get bored with it," he joked.
This isn't the first time Hayes has discussed his sexuality, during his stint on Will and Grace's first run. Worried that he might be typecast for being an openly gay actor playing a flamboyantly gay character, Hayes refused to discuss his sexuality in public until 2010, four years after Will and Grace had come to an end.
"I thought, 'I don't know how to handle this. I'm not bright enough, I don't have the DNA to be a spokesperson for any kind of group of people'," he said.
“Everybody in the gay community knew I was gay, but it was this fight I had with the press because they want you to come out on their terms, and other gay people what you to come out on their terms, and if you don’t come out on their terms you’re just an asshole, and you’re wrong.”
