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HOLLYWOOD—Less
than one hour after e-mailing an interview request to an
actor’s manager, the telephone rang. It wasn’t a
publicist demanding to know the parameters of the
interview, where the story would be placed or how big
the photographs would be. It was the actor himself, and
in his unassuming way, he agreed to meet with a
reporter.
 This
is not how it usually happens in
Hollywood,
but T.R. Knight doesn’t seem interested in most things
Hollywood.
Before Grey’s Anatomy transformed his life, he
was a Minnesota native who passed up college to become a
New York City theater actor. But then he signed on to what has
become a TV phenomenon, and Knight’s personal and
professional life took some twists and turns he could
have never foreseen when he was toiling in Noises Off
or Tartuffe on Broadway. How could a struggling
actor ever figure on landing a leading gig on one of
TV’s biggest shows only to be impelled to come out as a
gay man when tabloid coverage of an on-set fight made
his sexuality an unexpected target?
In
person, Knight, 34, is polite and is a slow and cautious
speaker who becomes more animated when he is not talking
about himself. His decision to forgo the publicity
machine followed a remarkable season for Grey’s,
which undoubtedly will go down as one of the most
important, if not most difficult, years in his life.
“You
know, when you get [to
Los Angeles],
people say you should do this, and this is what you have
to do,” Knight said. “And I just think that sometimes it
takes a little bit for you to figure it out yourself and
see where your comfort is. This is just a more low-key
approach. It’s not like you’ve got hundreds of people a
day trying to get at you. That’s someone else. That’s
not me. Flying under the radar is preferable many times.
I like this for now. I do.”
The very
popular Grey’s won the Golden Globe for Best
Drama in January and has been nominated for five of the
top Emmy categories, including Best Drama and Best
Supporting Actor for Knight. He has received the honor
for his turn as the lovable, bumbling underdog George
O’Malley, who must start over as an intern in the fourth
season after failing his exam.
But
instead of reveling in the sweet times, the Grey’s
cast had its third season marred by the ugly
behind-the-scenes controversy that began with Isaiah
Washington’s
on-set homophobic slur in October and ignited when he
repeated it at the Golden Globes in front of an
international media. The end of the season should have
brought much-needed relief, but after
Washington
was fired in June, he embarked on a tell-all publicity
tour that has yet to make its final stop.
At whom
was the demeaning word directed? Washington says that he
said it in a moment of anger during a fight with Patrick
Dempsey and that Knight had nothing to do with it. But
Knight, in his only public comments about the ordeal, on
The Ellen DeGeneres Show in January, said that
Washington directed the slur at him and that he “and everybody heard
it.”
Nearly a
year later, the he-said, he-said of it all seems
insignificant when Knight discusses his decision to
announce publicly last October that he is gay. After
rumors about the on-set problems circulated, Knight
issued a statement to People magazine, against the
advice of most of his handlers, in which he said, “I
hope the fact that I’m gay isn’t the most interesting
part of me.”
Knight
wasn’t coming out of the closet; the people in his life
know his sexuality. But revealing it to the world is a
thorny matter for an actor on a hit TV show. Over lunch
at a
Venice Beach
café last month, Knight said no one had ever used that
word against him before, and he felt he needed to
address it.
“It
wasn’t the only choice I could have made, but it was the
only choice I could have made and lived with myself, if
that makes sense,” Knight said.
Katherine Heigl, who plays Dr. Izzie Stevens on
Grey’s and is Knight’s best friend, says she is
proud that Knight had the conviction to follow his heart
when the only advice he was getting was that he could
ruin his career by proclaiming his sexual orientation.
“T.R.
wasn’t going around acting like a playboy or pretending
to be something he wasn’t,” said Heigl, who also is
nominated for an Emmy, in the Best Supporting Actress
category. “But it’s an omission of the truth by not
saying anything at all, and there’s a weight to that. I
just sense a freedom in him that wasn’t there, a sense
of settling into his own skin.”
Over the
last 11 months, especially since Washington’s gabfest
began, Heigl said, she has often wished her friend would
speak up about so much more. But Knight is adamant that
he has said all he will ever need to say, even as
Washington was appearing on Court TV’s Star Jones
show as Knight finished his ravioli at the C&O Trattoria.
“I have
nothing, absolutely nothing to say about it,” Knight
said, his leg tapping underneath the table, his speech
slowing considerably. “With all due respect, I haven’t
said much at all, but I have said some, and I don’t need
to say more. That’s all I need to. That’s all I will
talk about. That’s all. ‘Cause it’s, ‘cause it’s August
of ’07. I’m just saying the day, it’s August of ’07. And
it’s a beautiful sunny day. In. August. Of 2007.”
Heigl,
on the other hand, has plenty to say: “I have absolutely
no respect at all for how Isaiah has handled this. I’m
disgusted. That’s probably a really strong thing to say,
and I’m probably going to get yelled at for saying this,
but I remember sitting with T.R. and saying, ‘You should
say this. And you should go on that show and say that.
“It
wasn’t even me who [Washington]
was talking about, but I felt so infuriated and angry
because that was the only opinion getting heard.
Shouldn’t T.R. have something to say? But he was right.
To say nothing at all is the most dignified thing he
could do and the most honorable thing he could do for
himself and for what really happened that day and for
the whole situation. And it speaks volumes.”
Knight’s
behavior earned him a standing ovation at the GLAAD
Media Awards in Los Angeles in April, a response that he
calls “sweet” but still makes him cringe because, he
said, “I didn’t feel I warranted that. I haven’t done
anything.”
Now the
actor, who dabbled in a few television show guest spots
(Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Frasier and
CSI) and was not known to creator Shonda Rhimes
when he auditioned for the Grey’s pilot, is a few
days away from possibly winning an Emmy. Knight was
nominated for the two-part episode “Six Days,” in which
George’s father dies.
The
nomination means “recognition” to Knight, but, he said,
it’s also a “humbling reminder” of all that he still
needs to learn. To the Emmys, he is wearing a tuxedo and
taking a female friend from New York as his date. He is
not preparing a speech “because I’m not comfortable with
that,” which Heigl finds amusing and “hypocritical”
because she says he badgered her to write one for
herself when she was up for a Globe.
After a
most trying year, Heigl believes this is her best
friend’s moment.
“As we
all know, the most painful lessons are the ones that can
cause the most growth if you face it,” Knight said. “So
a lot of it, I think, I’ll still be thinking out for a
while, but it’s good. It’s good. And who knows what
September is going to bring?”
The
Emmys? |
