Wesley Eure Comes Out

This week, AfterElton had an exclusive coming out interview with 70's TV heartthrob Wesley Eure, who was on Days of Our Lives from 1974-1981 playing Mike Horton. He was also on the classic 70's Saturday morning show Land of the Lost.

Eure's run on Days was before my time (the first Mike Horton I remember was played by Michael T. Weiss in the late 80's) but I've heard much about him from fans of the show who are a bit older than me and still remember loving him in the role.

Wesley has a lot of interesting things to say in the Q&A, but this part especially interested me:

AE: Do you think being gay hurt your career?
WE: Absolutely. It was a horrible time in Hollywood, being gay. It was horrible. I was on the cover of Tiger Beat and all those a lot, and they'd do those "Win A Date With Wesley" and "Who's Wesley Dating?" It was so disingenuous. I had a full life. I've had a lot of friends and some pretty high profile partners, and it was an odd thing. I got fired from Days of Our Lives for being gay.

AE: Is that right?
WE: That's what I was told. I mean, they told me a lot of different reasons. After nine years, my contract was up, but I was hosting the number one show for Nickelodeon, Finders Keepers. It was on cable, but this was before everybody had Nickelodeon. Mark Summers was doing Double Dare. I was getting bigger ratings than Mark. I became the number one host for kids for two seasons, and then we heard the show was being sold to Fox. Everybody else was celebrating and I went, "Oh, no. I'm out of a job." Sure enough. I waited, I kept calling, "Am I hosting the show?" They wouldn't answer the question, and then I got the call they went with somebody younger.

I knew Fox and NBC were run by gay men at the time, but what was odd about the industry at the time, it was amazing how the gay men were perpetuating the damage. I remember Earl Greenburg — who was a big philanthropist here in Palm Springs, and had the Desert AIDS Project, he did some wonderful work, he's passed away now this last year — but the first time I saw him in Palm Springs, he said, "Didn't I fire you?" He was head of NBC Daytime at the time.

AE: And what did you say when he said that?
WE: [laughs] I said, "You're an ass."

I've written before about how mandatory the closet that LGBT soap stars find themselves living in is, even now, so I have no trouble believing that Days of Our Lives fired Eure 28 years ago for being too open about his sexuality.

The saddest part, though, is that Eure wasn't very out at all. Reading the interview, it's obvious that he while was very out in his personal life, including with the cast and crew of Days, he was very closeted publicly (a situation that most LGBT soap stars today would find very familiar).

Nearly thirty years after Eure was let go from the show, there is an all time high of out LGBT actors & actresses working in daytime: a grand total of three. Sad as that number is, just a few months ago, there was only one. Clementine Ford & Thom Bierdz on The Young and the Restless and Scott Evans on One Life to Live are the only three out daytime stars, though they're far from being the only LGBT onscreen talent working in the medium.

Ford & Bierdz will be involved in major storylines this summer on Y&R and Evans seems to be showing up more and more often in his recurring role as Oliver Fish on OLTL. Hopefully, the ability of these three actors to be out and still maintain a career in daytime will encourage others to follow their example and help push the door to the daytime closet open a bit further.

It would be wonderful if a young actor (or actress) like Eure was could come out at the height of his career (or be out from the very start, for that matter) without having to worry about losing everything. There has been a lot of progress in thirty years, but clearly there is still a long way to go.