The actor reveals how fears about him playing the gay teen on One Life to Live disappeared after the character came out…
At 17 years old, Ryan Phillippe booked his breakout role on his mother’s favourite daytime soap opera One Life To Live. The future Cruel Intentions star portrayed the role of Billy Douglas from 1992 to 1993, a new teen in the fictional town of Llanview. He was also the first gay teenager to be featured on daytime television, a storyline many call “groundbreaking.”.
In a recent interview with People, the actor spoke about what a profound experience playing Billy was. “I was so young that there were elements of me that were afraid because it was such a different time,” he says about playing gay teen who throughout his storyline dealt with coming to terms with his homosexuality and the intolerance from locals.
The actor admitted in the ‘90s to not knowing the character was gay telling Entertainment Weekly, “They told me, and I said ‘Oh! Okay!’ but a shock went through my system. I thought, ‘What is my family going to think? What about my friends?’ But I realized that for Billy, the torment is a hundred times that.”
Now, he shares with People how many in his inner circle at the time told him not to take the role. “I think there were some fears associated with the point in time that we were at and it being before so many walls and ceilings have been broken in that regard,” Phillippe says. He went on to say how the positive reaction he received changed these attitudes.
When Billy came out to Reverend Andrew Carpenter, he talked about the lack of positive gay representation on screen and not having anyone to compare himself to, similar comments youth viewers told Phillippe in the fan mail received. “I’ve never seen someone represent me in any entertainment before in my life,” he remembers the letters saying. He even got mail from parents with LGBTQ+ children saying how watching the show was a way they could connect with their child.
When Billy’s storyline ended fans were upset, with some writing to Soap Opera Digest to vent. One fan’s letter, featured in the book To Be Continued…Soap Operas Around the World, said in part, “After presenting a well-researched, well-written and timely storyline on homophobia One Life To Live has apparently deserted the character of Billy Douglas…Michael Malone (head writer) is doing viewers a great disservice by not opening the next chapter in this character life.”
As IN Magazine reported in a Flashback article, while adult gay characters made low-key appearances in the soap world, “no show had ever prominently featured a gay plot line – let alone a gay teenager – on its front burner.”
“As that job progressed, I realized how important it was to some people. And I was only 17 years old, so you don’t really have a sense of that,” he tells People. “I very much matured through having had that experience and seeing the impact that it had for others.”
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