‘My So-Called Life’ 25 Years Later: Claire Danes and Wilson Cruz Look Back

By Ramin Setoodeh

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – When “My So-Called Life” debuted in 1994, there weren’t many portraits of gay teenagers on television. But Wilson Cruz changed that with his depiction of Rickie, a proudly rebellious high school sophomore who was a key member of Angela Chase’s social circle. As a true confidant to Claire Danes’ Angela, Rickie was both a TV trendsetter and a wonderfully ordinary teen. And Cruz brought an LGBTQ character into living rooms before “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “Dawson’s Creek” did the same a few years later.

On a recent evening, Danes takes a break from shooting “Homeland” in Morocco to chat with Cruz for Variety’s Pride Issue. It feels like no time has passed between the two co-stars as Danes recalls one of her favorite episodes, set at an AIDS dance-a-thon. “I remember dancing with you to ‘Sweet Dreams,’” Danes tells Cruz. “That was a seminal moment of my life. I don’t know if I had done that before, gone out dancing for the sake of it. It was euphoric.” Here’s what they had to say about the groundbreaking series created by Winnie Holzman.

: Wilson, can you remember what we did 25 years ago?

: I was 19 when we made the pilot. You were 13. But I felt no separation from you. I remember having these conversations with you and thinking back, “Could she really comprehend what I was talking about?” But you did.

CD: We were all kind of venturing forth into a big unknown. For you, it was probably that much more heightened, because there hadn’t been a precedent.

WC: I felt like A.J. [Langer] and Devon Odessa had worked so much, and they were so savvy.

CD:
 Jared [Leto] had done a Noxzema commercial, so he was big time.

WC:
 My agent sent me the script, and she didn’t necessarily know that I was gay. I read it, and I had to decide whether or not I wanted to disclose to her. I waited. I had made a deal with myself that I would come out if the series went. I wanted people to know that I, as a gay man — a gay boy at the time — really put my stamp of approval to what we were doing. So that’s when I told my parents, and that’s when I was kicked out.

CD:
 Whoa.

WC: I lived on friends’ couches and in my car until we started filming the series. I remember we were with Winnie on our way to something, and I told her what had happened with my dad. Months later, I get this script where Rickie goes through a very similar thing. When I look back on that whole experience, I think of my fictional world and my reality converging. It was cathartic. I wonder if there were things that you felt that way about.

CD: Oh, my gosh. Yes. I was in so much pain. I don’t think I’ve ever been in more pain in my life. That’s a very challenging age, especially for girls. I had just gone through junior high school. I felt bludgeoned, navigating my way through those social gymnastics. I was so bad at it.

WC: Nobody is good at it.

CD: Some people are better than others. I was especially miserable at it. So then I was rescued on so many levels. One, I didn’t have to go to school suddenly. I was privately tutored. Also, I had this language delivered to me by a brilliant writer. She said everything that I wanted in my heart but didn’t have the means of articulating.

I don’t mean to compare our experiences actually because adolescence is something everybody has to go through, and of course it’s dark. But what you were doing was remarkable. I don’t think I was able to know that from my vantage point at the time we worked together.

WC: You knew I was gay, right?

CD: I knew you were gay, and I knew you had made this choice to come out, and you were still very raw from that. I don’t think I really knew that you had been rejected by your parents.

WC: Honestly, I wasn’t really talking about it. Did I ever tell you what happened in the audition room?

CD: No.

WC: I went in kind of dressed like Rickie. I put on these bright red Levi’s and a rainbow shirt. I sprayed my hair to the hilt. I put on eyeliner. When I got there, there were three or four guys going for the same part, but they were wearing khakis and a polo. I thought, “Boy, did you guys miss the mark on this one.”

So when I walked in and met with [casting director] Mary Goldberg, it felt really personal to me. We went through the scene. There wasn’t a lot in the pilot, because I didn’t say a lot. Mary looked at me like, “Thank you.” I started to well up. I walked to the door to leave, not knowing if I was going to come back or not. I turned around and said to her, “Before I go, please do me a favor and tell Winnie Holzman, this would have meant so much to me when I was 16 years old to see this guy on TV.”

CD: Aaah.

WC: I started to cry a bit. She came up to me and just looked at me, and she goes, “I’m not going to tell her, because I have a feeling you’re going to be able to tell her yourself.”

CD:
 Wow!

WC: I know you went through a pretty long process, right?

CD: We went through the gauntlet of auditions to get the pilot. Then the pilot did not get picked up. I went back to high school. Suddenly, poof, it did get picked up. I felt very jerked around. It was really jarring and confusing. It was a strange way to begin because I had mourned the loss of it.

WC: And then I think we said goodbye three times. Remember? Every time they’d do a short order, we’d have a wrap party. Then we’d be back. Not to be corny, but we had a time.