Bruce bares it all, folks Gray a nervous guest star in Queer As Folk By CLAIRE BICKLEY -- Toronto Sun December 12, 2001

Bruce Gray was having the egg-white omelette. Hold the toast.

"I'm on a diet. I have to be naked," he explained with a sigh over breakfast last week, a day before reporting to the set of Queer As Folk.

Gray was back in town to guest star in four episodes of the sexy Showcase Television drama about gay men and women. Although he's still tall, slim and handsome at what he calls his "stately age," he was feeling a few nerves about baring it all.

"I've been standing in front of the mirror and just looking," he said with a rueful chuckle. "Also, I have a friend from high school. We were on the same swimming team and we know each other really well. He came up last night and we were going to go out for dinner, so I had a shower and I said, 'Now listen, Tom, don't get alarmed, but I'm going to stand naked in front of you because you've seen me naked in the swimming pool.' I've got to know what it's like. I'm going to have to stand in front of the crew and that's my biggest fear. They're used to it, but everybody that they're used to seeing is 30, and you know, the gin and the pumpkin pies and gravity have taken their toll. Things aren't quite where you want them to be."

Gray was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Toronto at age 10, giving him the professional advantage of dual citizenship. He now calls L.A. home, where he directs theatre and works with gifted grade schoolers in playwriting and performing workshops. Canadians know him best for the five years he worked here, starring on TV's Traders as ruthless, buttoned-down banker Adam Cunningham. Unlike that stiff character, he's a riot, the sort of raconteur who makes many younger actors we've interviewed seem about as interesting as children with cigarettes.

His film credits include Starship Troopers, Spy Hard, The Peacemaker and Dragnet. He's been on dozens of major U.S. series, including repeat appearances on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation, Sisters, Tour Of Duty, Murder She Wrote, Knots Landing, Babylon 5 and Beverly Hills 90210. Two made-in-Canada movies are awaiting release, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, produced by Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson, and Hypercube, the sequel to the sci-fi hit Cube.

Gray co-stars in Hypercube with Geraint Wyn-Davies, who was a child actor in the 1970s when they both had roles on the CFTO soap opera High Hopes.

"We had no plot. There was just never anything going on, the idea being that Canadians were perfectly happy to watch a TV show in which people drank coffee and talked about the day's events. There was no turmoil, no conflict. The biggest thing that happened was one of the characters, Dr. Dan, lost his wallet when he came to date my daughter and we talked about it for three weeks," Gray said.

"But then I went to New York and to Edge Of Night. This is a high-powered, high-plot, shoot-'em-up soap opera. Kim Hunter's playing my wife and she's playing this old movie star sort of like Norma Desmond who is bitter about her career and is turning into a witch and casting spells and stuff and eventually does turn into a witch in, you know, the full get-up, burns our house down and immolates herself. A lot going on. One day, I came downstairs on Edge and found my son kissing my daughter and I thought, 'Incest!' And he said, 'No, someone shot her; I was just consoling her.' And I went, 'Shot her!?!' and just then my wife, Kim Hunter, who has been on the wagon, gets drunk and falls down the staircase drunk. I went, 'Drunk?!?' and then the front door opens and Frances Fisher, who went on to be in The Titanic, she's playing the little red-headed cop, she comes in and I make a pass at her. We're four lines into the scene. Incest, attempted murder, alcoholism and adultery. Four lines into the scene. Now that's plot."

As for the plot of his Queer As Folk episodes, he's been forbidden from revealing much beyond that he's cast as a wealthy pickle company magnate whose cruising moves from the computer screen to the real thing. Gray has no hangups about playing a gay love scene, although the explicitness of the show did give him pause.

"I find it embarrassing, especially when you're reading a script and it's saying, 'Come on in,' and then, 'Do you want to go out?' 'No, let's stay in,' and then the next line is a stage direction, 'And then he lowers himself ...' Excuse me, I just asked you for a cup of coffee." His episodes start running in March. "You're forbidden," he said, giving me a mock-stern glance. "No television that night."

BACK