What if the United States passed a national Marriage Equality Act? And what if two gay celebrities woke up one morning having pulled a Britney Spears — matching rings included? Such is the premise for the brand new web series, Husbands, created by a powerhouse of US television writers: veteran TV storyteller Jane Espenson, her new writing partner and star Brad ‘Cheeks’ Bell, and Emmy award-winning writer-producer Jeff Greenstein, returning to his roots as a director.
In the series, cultural icon and professional athlete Brady Kelly (Sean Hemeson) marries famous actor Cheeks in the traditional Las Vegas accidental (drunken) nuptial style. But fearing the political fallout of the world’s first star-studded gay divorce, they decide to have a go at being… Husbands. The series of 11 two-minute episodes also reunites Espenson with Caprica star Alessandra Torresani.
Both Espenson and Greenstein have stepped out of their usual roles while creating this web series. Greenstein began his film career at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts studying to be a director, but as he recounts: ‘while waiting for my artsy directing career to begin, I started writing sitcoms and that took up a lot of the next 20 years. When Desperate Housewives offered me the chance to direct, it was the moment — as I had already been working on the show for a long time it was the gentlest way to join that secret fraternity of directors. But that show was a machine — Husbands is different in that it’s a scrappy independent production with a small crew, shot entirely on location, and beyond the normal job of framing, getting the geography right and coaching the actors, it involved a lot more cheerleading.’
Espenson had also never made such a low budget internet-based comedy before, but she buzzes with excitement for her new venture: ‘I’ve run shows before — I ran Caprica — but when it’s a web series, you’re involved in every aspect. We were on location and the people who lived in the house had put their cats in the bathroom so they wouldn’t bother us, but the cats still made noise, so we took turns keeping them quiet. I would also pick up the breakfast burritos for the cast in the morning, and buy the props, and I loved every minute of it — I’m a part of a team that’s making something we’re all so invested in.
Sean Hemeson, Alessandra Torresani and Cheeks
Espenson and Greenstein have rather impressive track records of telling high profile LGBT stories on television over the last 15 years—Espenson recently wrote much of the new series, Torchwood: Miracle Day for Starz and BBC Worldwide, including the much talked-about steamy scenes featuring John Barrowman and a significant portion of the US gay population (well, two of them at least). She also fondly remembers her earliest LGBT writings on the first US sitcom with a leading lesbian:
‘Ellen predated Will & Grace, and people forget that: we were the first show in which the main character was out having same-sex dates. We received a lot of criticism — mainly that that was all the show was about anymore — but this was a show with a main character coming out in her thirties, and it had been a show without really high numbers anyway, so we figured let’s own this; let’s have her live this life. Otherwise, if she’s just saying that she’s a lesbian and she’s not dating, what has really changed? So that show had to be about her gayness. But that story would now be very agenda-y.’
Greenstein was hired to write Will & Grace early on in Series One, and he recalls the difficulty of entering a previously foreign world—that is, New York City “A-list” homosexuality: ‘Even though I didn’t know what a Manolo Blahnik was, I was a quick study. We wanted to make a show that was socially progressive, showing a New York that no one had seen before, as well as one that was colossally entertaining. But we found as we moved into future seasons the show meant a lot to a lot of people. A couple of weeks after the flashback to Will’s 1985 coming out aired, I was at a margarita bar with Eric McCormack and a 19-year-old kid in acid wash jeans walked up to us and said how that episode had helped him come out to his parents. It felt like success beyond success.’ He laughs: ‘Though early on we had a VHS copy of Russell T Davies’ Queer as Folk and we passed it around like a joint — we all thought, “Oh what we’re doing is so edgy” and then we watched the pilot of Queer as Folk and thought “oh, maybe not.”’
He continues, regarding his current project: ‘There is some of that progressiveness in Husbands, in that we treat the fact that this is marriage between two men as no big deal — we’re not putting big asterisks around it. You could tell this story on Dharma & Greg or Mad About You but it’s got a unique spin because of the experiences of these two characters.’
Espenson agrees: ‘We want Husbands to make the bigger political point that this should no longer be a big deal. After the little tweak of the universe [that a marriage equality act has passed], it’s just about a couple. Sure their discussions have to do with being this public couple, but it’s a conflict of personalities: it’s not them versus the world, it’s “gee, how are you and I going to be together?”’
Greenstein, Espenson and the cast of Husbands
She speaks similarly of her time writing on Caprica, the tragically ill-fated prequel to Battlestar Galactica: ‘Series creator Ronald D Moore talked to the writers about the hit man character, Sam Adama — he is gay, he has a husband, but he said we’re not going to do stories about it. There’s never been gender orientation-based discrimination in the Battlestar universe, so it is simply not an issue. It hasn’t shaped his psyche or history or how his family views him and it was fantastic to write. It would be great if that was how things started to play out in non-SciFi television. Maybe we have to wait for the world to become that, or maybe we have to make the world like that.’
Espenson has long been drawn to telling LGBT stories: ‘Joss Whedon recently pointed out to me that romantic comedy is based on obstacles, and we’re running out of obstacles. Jane Austen is about class barriers — that family doesn’t approve of that other family. A lot of those obstacles have gone away, so what are good new obstacles? Being out, not being out, the political challenges — these give you rich challenges and deeper romances.’
She pauses for a moment and smiles widely as she mentally searches for a quotation: ‘At the pivotal moment in Pride & Prejudice, Darcy says: “I love you contrary to my best interests” — you find that nowadays in a gay romance. You have great potential for that kind of moment. That’s hugely romantic and I want to write big romantic moments like that.’
You can watch their efforts come to fruition now as Husbands airs on the web from 13 September — find it at www.husbandstheseries.com.
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