Tuc Watkins reveals what finally nudged him out of the closet
in a new interview with Thrillist, he’s been playing gay characters pretty consistently since the ’90s, which feels like a rarity.
After breaking through on the long-running soap One Life To Live, he wasn’t exactly hiding his sexuality in the industry, but the actor wasn’t ready to go public, either.“I feel like I was caught in a catch-22,” he shares. “I was a gay actor who shouldn’t play gay roles if I wanted to play straight roles.
But I was also a gay actor who they weren’t hiring to play the straight roles because they knew I was gay. It’s amazing that I got any work.”Related: Matt Bomer, Robin de Jesus and Tuc Watkins on gay shame, sex & ‘The Boys in the Band’Indeed, he continued to book, including the hit ABC drama Desperate Housewives as Bob Harper, one half of a successful gay couple who moved to Wisteria Lane in 2007, during the show’s fourth season.It was during his run on the show that Watkins became a father to twins via surrogacy—something he’d long dreamed about.
While doing the press rounds for Housewives in 2013, he stopped by Marie Osmond’s talk show, of all places, to discuss new fatherhood and, for the first time, his sexuality.
