Max Montgomery for Variety It’s 3 p.m. at the Sunset Tower Hotel, the purgatory hour between lunch and dinner at one of Hollywood’s favorite places to hammer out deals and gaze at stars.
Jordan Firstman decides it’s late enough in the day for his first Aperol spritz, which leads to some reminiscing. It was a decade ago that über-producer Greg Berlanti invited the then-25-year-old Firstman to the Tower Bar to discuss the trajectory of his career. Berlanti, who became the showrunner of “Dawson’s Creek” at age 27, has served as a coach for more than one young queer creator, and Firstman had just sold a series to the cable channel Sundance TV, based on his romantic intergenerational short film “Call Your Father.” He was getting pushback from the network about casting a 50-year-old out gay actor in the lead.
Max Montgomery for Variety “He wasn’t an unknown; he was a great working actor,” Firstman recalls, declining to give his name. “The studio was like, ‘We would love to cast a gay actor, but there’s just no one that even touches the level of fame we need to justify you doing the show at this budget.’”
Firstman stabs Aperol-soaked ice with his straw, tensing at the memory. “I got to a place where I told them, ‘I’m not doing this if the actor isn’t gay.’ I was a little bit threatening, like, ‘You guys don’t want to look homophobic.’” Sundance TV ended up passing on the show, prompting Berlanti to attempt to rescue it for the nascent HBO Max. It would languish there for years, and then disappear altogether in that company’s revolving door of mergers and executive changes.
My, how times have changed.
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