TV Guide: The Forsaken’s Gay Subtext?
Thanks to everyone who sent this in. This is more about Kerr Smith but refers to Brendan
The Forsaken’s Gay Subtext
Tuesday, May 8, 2001Though he’s straight offscreen, there’s no denying that playing gay has made Kerr Smith’s acting career thus far. He recently made headlines with yet another same-sex kiss on Dawson’s Creek, and even flirted with Superman Dean Cain in last year’s gay indie hit, The Broken Hearts Club. Even so, Smith denies there’s any same-gender lovin’ in his current vampire flick, The Forsaken.
Some sharp-eyed (and perhaps wishfully thinking) viewers can’t help but notice a bit of homoerotic subtext in the fangfest, which features Smith and Roswell’s Brendan Fehr as very close buddies on the road trip from hell. In fact, so cozy and concerned for one another’s welfare are they that the duo tend to ignore Smith’s supposed love interest, Izabella Miko — who barely has any dialogue in the film.Actually, women contribute mainly to the body count in Forsaken, which focuses more on hotties like Johnathon Schaech and Simon Rex raising hell, while Smith and Fehr exchange winsome glances and lines like, “I heard a noise and I was worried about you.”
“Oh, that was for comedy,” Smith scoffs to TV Guide Online. “We just ad-libbed that line; it wasn’t even in the script.” Laughing nervously, he adds, “C’mon, give me a break! There’s no gay twist in the movie.”
And what of Miko’s neglected character? “We didn’t want to play the love story between Izabella and I,” Smith says. “There just wasn’t room for it in the movie and it wasn’t appropriate. The relationship between Brendan and I… By the end of the movie, we’ve gone through so many life or death situations that we become friends. That’s the kind of relationship it is.”
Hmm… so this isn’t a case of the love that dare not speak its name? “No, there’s nothing like that,” he smiles. “It’s not a bad thing, I’m just saying that was not our intention.” We’ll let moviegoers be the judge of that. — Daniel R. Coleridge