Matt Rogers on Subverting Gay Tropes With 'I Love That for You' and Being Messy in 'Fire Island' (Exclusive)

etonline.com:

Bowen Yang, Matt Rogers is having a much-deserved breakout moment onscreen, thanks to back-to-back roles in and  -- two projects that let the comedian shine as very funny, very different characters.“I’m really proud of the fact that I was able to show versatility,” he tells ET about playing an ambitious employee at a home shopping channel named Darcy on the Showtime comedy and the messy, drunk friend Luke in the Hulu film.

In the former, co-created by and starring Vanessa Bayer, Rogers loves being able to subvert the archetype of the “gay assistant.” “I love that the character and the script we’re aware of the trope and how it’s played out,” he says, explaining that Darcy “comes in, wearing designer garments and is very concerned with the fact that you call him the senior associate and not the assistant.

And I thought, ‘OK, we’re already off to a very self-aware start with the character.'«While Darcy, who very much keeps SVN in working order for CEO Patricia Cochran (an Emmy-worthy Jenifer Lewis), brings the laughs, he’s not just there to be the butt of some laugh-out-loud moment. “Every single episode, I learned something new about him that surprises me.

He ends up in a very different spot at the end of the season than he is in the beginning,” Rogers says, noting how good it feels to have an “actual arc and get to explore a character’s inner demons.”“Episode to episode, I’m constantly surprised by the things he says and does, and the way that he gets himself into trouble is even specific to him,” he adds.