Casting
producer Adam Drucker and Showtime are looking for
people who are ready to come out of the closet on
television on the new series Way Out.
From the creative
team behind A&E’s Intervention comes Way Out , a show that hopes to help people who are still
closeted come out to family, friends, coworkers, and,
in the process, anyone with a subscription to Showtime. But casting producer Adam
Drucker says that unlike most reality shows that find
entertainment in people’s pain, Way Out
is really about helping families come together.
Drucker sat down with Advocate.com in the hopes of
finding a few good people to film the
show’s pilot episode.
Advocate.com:When word first broke that Showtime is
producing a show about helping people come out to
their families and friends, gay people were
understandably skeptical. But hearing that it was
from the same team that produces Intervention
sort of softened the blow. How did working on
Intervention prepare you for this show?
Adam Drucker: I worked on Intervention in the
first season. Working on that show was incredibly
rewarding. Initially, when they first approached me
with Intervention, I had some skepticism. Would
it be exploitive? I wanted to make sure their goal was in no
way, shape, or form to exploit people’s pain
for entertainment. My argument was this: Do these
stories need to be televised? But I found that you
help an enormous amount of people if you show these stories,
and Intervention was my first exposure to the power
of something like this.
With Way
Out, it all depends on the execution and the
people we find –- finding people who absolutely want
to take part in this. We don’t want anyone
who’s even remotely unwilling.
I’m sure you heard from a lot of people,
"Why do we need a show about coming out?"
Oh yeah, people said, "Come on, were sort of
past the coming-out story." My response … and
what I've seen…is that as much as we are trying
to reach a gay audience, we’re trying to reach an
audience that’s universal. While the idea of a
coming-out show might be trite to certain communities
of gay people, it's still not understood by the masses.
Prop. 8 shows us that. The choice is not whether or
not you choose to be gay, it’s whether or not
you choose to come out. That’s a much easier choice
in places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.
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