Wilson Cruz, who played Rickie Vasquez on “My So Called Life”, spoke yesterday at OSU’s Diversity Lecture Series.
Cruz was the first openly gay actor to play a gay character on a nationally televised program.
During yesterday’s lecture he spoke about the ups and downs he has experienced on the set.
Cruz opened his speech by singing “Over the Rainbow,” which inspired him as a child.
“The reason I am able to be the person and actor that I am is because of the people and the art that has inspired me,” Cruz said.
His main influence growing up were his parents, who were both only 19 years old when he was born.
“We like to think that the three of us raised each other,” Cruz said.
He said they instilled in him the idea that nothing was out of his reach and that he could be anything he wanted.
Despite this, Cruz’s parents were also very conservative. To them, a family meant a man and a woman raising a child in a Catholic home.
Growing up, Cruz was interested in ballet, but his dad wanted him to be a football player. He also recalled hearing his father and other relatives making crude jokes about homosexuals. By the time he was seven or eight, Cruz knew he was one of the people they were joking about.
“I instinctively knew that I should be ashamed and loath myself,” Cruz said.
Cruz said he continued to hide his sexuality from his parents well into his adulthood. It wasn’t until he filmed the pilot for “My So Called Life” that he decided it was time to be truthful with his parents.
Cruz re-accounted the day he told his parents that he was gay.
“She asked if I was gay, and when I told her I was, she freaked out,” Cruz said. She started screaming and swerving all over the road. We ended up crashing into a tree, and even after we got out of the car, my mom was still yelling. Eventually, she just wiped her eyes and said as calmly as possible ‘I knew it all along,'” Cruz said.
“It was like a tornado ripped through my life and then just disappeared,” he said.
A year later, when Cruz found out the series had been picked up, he decided to tell his father.
“It was Christmas and my father asked me if I was a ‘faggot,’ to which I replied that I was,” Cruz said.
His father threw him out of the house and Cruz spent the next three months living in his car until the show started filming.
Cruz also discussed his experience with the press at the lecture.
“A typical interview involved a guy asking me if I had anything in common with Rickie, like wearing eye shadow or hanging out in the girls’ bathroom. Being the evil actor, I replied, ‘Are you trying to ask me if I am gay?’ Eventually they would ask me and I would say ‘yes.’ They never had follow-up questions,” Cruz said.
