Although it seems almost as if it as an aughts period
piece, I still miss Ugly Betty, with
its brash gay tone, over the top art direction, & terrific performances,
especially by Birthday Boy Michael Urie.
Urie’s almost exclusive devotion to the Off-Broadway
stage since Ugly Betty went off the
air might seem bold, especially for a young Julliard trained actor whose
portrayal of the spicy, sassy fashion assistant Marc St. James helped make the
show a favorite at Post Apocalyptic Bohemia
for its entire 4 season run.
Urie’s performance as Rudi Gernreich (with whom he shares
a birthday today), the Austrian gay rights activist & founding member of the
Mattachine Society in the well-received- The
Temperamentals in 2009, brought him
a Lucille Lortel Award, & his starring turn in the 2010 season revival of Tony
Kushner's Angels In America brought more ecstatic reviews
This season Urie played the clumsy, lovesick Yepikhodov
in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, alongside John Turturro &
Dianne Wiest, in Classic Stage Company's production .
This fall Urie comes back to Gay TV with the new CBS
sitcom- Partners, from the creators
& writers of Will & Grace
- David
Kohan & openly gay- Max
Mutchnick. Urie & David Krumholtz play childhood
friends, one gay & one straight, who have grown up to be business
associates & basically soulmates, despite both being in relationships, with
Sophia Bush & Brandon Routh, respectively. I like the idea of Mark St. John
& Superman as boyfriends.
Urie identifies as "queer." He's lives in NYC
with his boyfriend, actor Ryan Spahn. Urie: "I’ve been in a relationship for a while now, & if you just met the
two of us together we’d be ‘gay.' But that somehow means anything that happened
before we met didn’t count, & I don’t feel that way. I know that some
people feel that way. They were with women, but it always felt wrong. But it
didn’t for me. It felt right at the time. It didn’t work out, but it also didn’t
work out with other men, many times. That’s why ‘gay’ never seemed right."
Urie & Spahn being adorable
Urie celebrates his 32nd birthday today,
August 8th.
I love this guy!
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