Charlie Carver wrote four episodes in the latest season of the horror anthology ‘American Horror Story,’ and he opened up about it in a recent interview with Datebook.
First off, the 34-year-old actor and screenwriter talked about how he feels being a successful gay man in Hollywood despite all the things he was previously told were impossible.
“I feel very fortunate that I’ve been able to work as consistently and as long as I have. It’s just encouraging about the direction of the world. Ryan (Murphy) is such a personal hero, and was long before we started working together, because he really is, in my mind, one of the creative forces in this business that’s really changed representation,” Carver stated.
He continued,
“And, yes, representation matters, but it also affords this whole new wealth of story. It’s such an exciting time to work (in television). Even with “American Horror Story” this season, I think we’ve moved to a place where gay stories, queer stories, LGBTQ stories, they no longer have to feel sanitized.”
The actor further shared how he had to be careful about playing roles before and after coming out as gay in 2016, and how it’s different back then and now expressing,
“I certainly felt, coming up in this business, that I had to be really careful about what kinds of roles I played before I came out, and even after I came out. (A lot of those) stories served a purpose of really assimilating gay storytelling into a larger narrative. And, now, it’s all kind of broken up and fun and free. To get to do something like this is really fun.
Moreover, Carver also talked about his screenwriting experience in ‘American Horror Story: NYC’ stating,
“I’ve written some pilots and some specs before. This is my first professional writing credit. I’m learning from the best. I had so much fun working with Ryan and the other writers to craft the story and really see how to marry my own sensibility with the period that we were working with, along with the demands of the franchise.”
“It’s been such an educational experience. The way that Ryan can see the shape of things well before they’re even fully constituted, it’s the best. I keep saying the word “fun,” but I’m still in the afterglow of having wrapped, and I really had the best time,” he further expressed.
The actor then talked about growing up as a queer kid in San Francisco and how it made an impact on how he viewed the LGBTQ+ community.
“I grew up in the Upper Haight, and then when my parents split, my mom actually moved up to the North Bay, up to Wine Country. And there’s just something, we could call it queer, but there’s just something quintessentially San Francisco, or Northern California, that is free-spirited and experimental,” he shared.
Carver continued by noting how much of what he witnessed growing up in the Bay Area affected who he is at present stating,
“I was exposed to so much as a kid, by virtue of growing up there. Whether that was theater in the city or other kinds of performances or family friends, there’s a kind of diversity, not only in terms of the kinds of people who live in San Francisco, but diversity of thought, diversity of expression. And that was formative into who I am, absolutely formative in terms of who I am today.”
Aside from screenwriting for Season 11 of ‘American Horror Story,’ the actor is also starring in the series as a character named Adam. ‘American Horror Story: NYC’ airs every Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX, and it is also available for streaming on Hulu.
Sources: datebook.sfchronicle.com, businessinsider.com
It seems weird to me that only one twin is gay, probably because I’m friends with two sets of twins who are all gay 🙂