Sean Maher sat down with Entertainment Weekly and then tweeted, "Today is a big day for me! A long time coming and I have something extremely important to share with you all."
Here's an excerpt from the EW story. You can read the rest here.
"Firefly alum and Playboy Club actor Sean Maher has worked steadily in Hollywood for 14 years, and during that time, he made the choice to be closeted about his personal life as a gay man — until now. For the first time, Maher opens up about his sexuality in an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I was nervous coming here today because I’ve just never talked about it,” Maher says, while sitting down to chat at Little Dom’s Italian bistro in Los Angeles’ trendy Los Feliz neighborhood, the area where the actor lives with Paul, his partner of nearly nine years, and their two children, Sophia Rose, 4, and Liam Xavier, 14 months. “But, it’s so liberating. It was interesting to be coming to have a conversation that I was always afraid to have.” Despite his trepidation, he adds with a big smile: “This is my coming out ball. I’ve been dying to do this.” “I’ve never discussed it publicly,” the 36-year-old continues. “I’ve never been asked about it publicly, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t paint a different picture.” Maher says that not coming out wasn’t so much a choice as much as it was a reality of the business when he first came to L.A. fresh out of college back in 1997. Publicists working with him during his first Tinseltown role as the title character on Fox’s short-lived cop drama Ryan Caulfield: Year One assumed he was straight — and he didn’t tell them otherwise, out of fear. “I’m 22, I move to L.A., and it’s such a cliché, but the day I arrive, publicists from the show took me out to The Ivy for lunch,” he remembers. “They’re telling me, ‘You know, gosh, we’d really appreciate it if you could keep your girlfriend on the side because we want to appeal to the female demographic of the show.’” Granted, Maher could have corrected his handlers, but in that instant, he decided not to. “At that moment, I didn’t think to say, ‘Oh, I’m gay,’ because right before I left New York [where he went to college at NYU], I had my manager tell me: ‘You need to get a girl on your arm or people will start talking.’ I remember telling him: ‘I’m gay.’ He had no idea. And he said: ‘All the more reason to get a girl on your arm.’ My agent was also like, ‘It’s best if you keep your options open. Maybe bisexual?’ Despite pressure from his manager and agent, both of whom he has since parted ways with, it was ultimately Maher’s decision to stay in the closet, out of concern that he wouldn’t otherwise be able to book leading-man roles. “I kept thinking, This is my first show, I don’t want to get fired,” Maher says. “I’m thinking, What is the potential that if they caught wind that they had cast a gay lead actor that they would fire me? I was young, I was 22. I didn’t know anything. So that sort of started the idea of, okay, well, I’m working a lot, I guess I’ll just keep that gay part of my life on the back burner for now. I went so far as to sleep with women a couple times. It was a very confusing time for me.” But being in the closet tormented Maher. “It was so exhausting, and I was so miserable,” Maher says. “I didn’t really have any life other than work and this façade I was putting on. So I kept my friends from college [where he was out] separate from my work friends, and that was very confusing. I just kept going on and on painting this picture of somebody I wasn’t. I didn’t have time for a personal relationship anyway. And you just don’t realize that it’s eating away at your soul ... The role for which Maher is probably most well-known is Dr. Simon Tam, a surgeon on the run after breaking his sister River (Summer Glau, who he’s pictured with here) out of a research facility, on the cult TV series Firefly and follow-up feature Serenity, both created by Joss Whedon. Maher remembers those projects as some of his best — even though his personal life was still off-limits during that time. “Looking back, on Firefly for instance, I do wish on day one I had told them because these are some of the most amazing people who are still like family to me,” Maher says. “I am so grateful for that show because they saved me. I was so unhappy and lonely and to come to work everyday with that group was wonderful. It really was all I had at that point in my life.”
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