“Melrose Place” star Doug Savant explains why he refused to come out as straight while playing gay character on TV

"I was not going to make my living playing a gay man, but then say, 'Oh, I would never be associated with that.'"

Doug Savant is opening up about the offscreen challenges he faced during his time on Melrose Place.

"When we were shooting all those things and the trailers for the show, I said to Sam, our publicist, 'Do you care to talk about how we're going to handle this going forward, that there was a gay character?'" he told his former costars Laura Leighton, Courtney Thorne-Smith, and Daphne Zuniga on their Still The Place podcast. "I knew it was exceptional, and I thought people would be interested. But she goes, 'Well, no, it's not a big deal. You're an actor, you're just playing a character.' And I said, 'Oh, clearly she doesn't get it.'"

Savant played the gay character Matt Fielding on six of Melrose Place's seven seasons, but in real life, he's straight. He intuited before anyone else that therein might lie a problem. Eventually, he was called into a meeting with Melrose Place creator Darren Star and the show's PR team, who told him, "'We don't see why it's a big deal. Why wouldn't you just say, 'Well, it shouldn't matter, but I'm heterosexual.' I said 'No.' I was not going to make my living playing a gay man, but then say, 'Oh, I would never be associated with that.'"

Matt Fielding avoided some of the stereotypical issues that plague queer characters in media — his storylines weren't racked with tragedy, he wasn't a self-hating closet case, and he wasn't the undeveloped gay best friend. But Savant was notoriously never given a love scene — his character never even kissed another man across six seasons. A same-sex kiss was planned for a 1994 episode, but the network reportedly got cold feet at the last minute, and cut away to another character's reaction to the kiss to illustrate the kiss itself.

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Savant provided crucial context for the contemporary pressure surrounding this character, noting "he was the only gay character at that time in television. We had had Billy Crystal [in Soap], we were about to have Mitchell Anderson on Party of Five, and Bill Brochtrup, a friend of mine, on NYPD Blue. But at the time, [Matt] was the only one. So there was an enormous amount of interest."

Related: 'Desperate Housewives' actor Doug Savant on Lynette and Tom: 'He's done jumping'

In addition to those that Savant mentions, other notable early LGBTQ+ roles include Al Corley's character on 1980s' soap Dynasty and Wilson Cruz's character on My So-Called Life, which was the first queer character to be played by an openly queer actor when it debuted two years after Melrose Place. Savant's point is well-taken: with so few representatives of a vulnerable demographic in the TV landscape, the pressure was on to accord the character his requisite dignity.

How did Savant go about that? "I went out and I was asked, in every conceivable way, whether I was straight or gay. And I would then say, 'Well, it's interesting, just that that's the assumption... No one asked [Andrew Shue], 'You're playing Billy, does that mean you're straight?'" Then when asked "'What do you have in common with the character?' I'd say, 'Well, we're the same height and we both have a sense of humor.'"

Related: Jack Wagner used to pretend to not know Melrose Place costar Heather Locklear's name: 'Where's Helen?'

Savant feels that the show's handlers and producers thought "it would be somehow more palatable to the American public if they could avail themselves of the reality that I was actually a straight man. And I thought that was morally reprehensible... I just couldn't morally bring myself to say, 'I'm going to come to work and I'm going to play this character, but I should distance myself from it.' My intention with Matt was to say he is your son, he is your brother, he is your friend. He is every man, he's your neighbor. He's a regular guy who happens to be gay."

Despite having a relatively barren love life, Fielding was given some of the series' most impactful storylines, from facing workplace discrimination to seeking justice for a hate crime. As with the best primetime teen soap stars, his character was killed off screen in a car crash toward the series' end. Savant went on to play Tom Scavo for nine years on Desperate Housewives, and has been married to his costar (and pod interviewer) Laura Leighton since 1998.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Wilson Cruz's character on My So-Called Life was a predecessor to Doug Savant's role on Melrose Place. The former show debuted two years after the latter.