Makeover Man

Out Magazine
March 2004
By Daniel R. Coleridge

In a new TV movie, Nicholas Brendon plays gay and casts a queer eye on a straight girl in need.

Nicholas Brendon spent seven seasons saving the world as Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So what’s he doing as a follow-up? Makeovers!

On March 14 he appears in Celeste in the City, an ABC Family movie about a country girl (Majandra Delfino) who moves to Manhatten with few connections and even less fashion sense. Fortunately, Celeste contacts her long-lost gay cousin, Dana, who helps zhoozh her up. Enter Brendon as Dana.

It’s a frosty December afternoon in Toronto, where Brendon’s enjoying a day off from shooting Celeste. Having just awakened from a nap, he’s raring to dish about the film in his sarcastic Xander-like way. “Celeste just looks horrible,” he explains. “We make her over, like on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy but with a girl. I’m in charge of the whole thing. In my posse, one does hair, one does style, one does culture, and so on. My specialty is telling people what to do.”

Um, just a wild guess, but was his character at all inspired by Carson Kressley? “I think they wrote it close to Carson, but I’m doing kind of a medley of the Queer Eye guys. I put them all in a pot, mixed it, and came out with Dana.”

Brendon sounds like a fan of Bravo’s hit makeover show. “Yes, I am,” he says. “I just wish they’d pick straight guys who weren’t so disgusting. Some of us actually do moisturize and brush our teeth daily.” (And he’s more than just another pretty, moisturized face: Brendon succeeded as an actor despite being a stutterer most of his life; for the past two years he’s been a spokesman for the Stuttering Foundation of America.) The 32-year-old Los Angeles native jokes that his gay pals “helped me get into character for this part. I love going to [the West Hollywood bar] the Abbey. But guys tend not to hit on me when I’m with my wife.”

Heterosexuality aside, he took the integrity of his homo character very seriously. “I had a joke line like, ‘Oh, you don’t owe me anything. Maybe you have a gay brother you can hook me up with – or better yet, a straight one.’ I refused to say that line because it’s stereotyping. Like, all gay men want straight men? C’mon.”

Apart from that momentary misstep in the script, Brendon insists Celeste’s intentions are good. Although Dana is a fussy fashionista, “the film is saying what’s important is what’s inside, not the outward appearance. It’s the sweetest, least offensive film I’ve ever done. There’s no oil wrestling, like in Psycho Beach Party,” he says, giving a nod to the film in which he costarred.

Sadly, although Brendon’s alter ego runs a swinging gay nightclub, he has no love interest. Yet, like Celeste, he does some growing up, which includes coming out to his estranged family. “My parents don’t know, so at the end of the movie I make the decision to tell them – or more likely confirm – that their Dana is definitely a man-eater!”

menu
contact
The Webmaster:
Your name:

E-mail address:

Comment/Question:



mailing list
To be notified of updates to the site:
Subscribe
Unsubscribe


search NB.com



  
recent entries
A FanGeek Production

© 2000-2007