In an interview with the AV Club, Ruggiero celebrated the show’s 20th anniversary and revealed that his character – Marco Del Rossi – helped him come out. “I was a closeted gay boy, and I found myself on the show, and my life went from zero to 100.
I hadn’t really acted that much before,” he explained. “Suddenly, I was a character that was playing to all my deepest, darkest secrets, so there was a lot of negotiation of my coming out personally and a negotiation of my personally not being prepared to have those conversations because they were drawing to these pains in me.” He added: “But in a way, I was forced to have those conversations, publicly and globally.