Fish Out of Water

What's a brother to do? In an interview with Advocate.com last January , movie star Chris Evans confirmed what blogs had been rumbling about for weeks... that his brother Scott Evans is gay. But Scott has always been out, and now with the news that ABC's One Life to Live has launched a gay story line that will feature Scott at the center, that makes Scott the second openly gay actor on daytime, following Y&R 's Thom Bierdz.

For more than a year and half, Scott has played Officer Oliver Fish -- "Fish" as he is known to the citizens of Llanview -- the nerdy, funny, and very human cop on the long-running daytime drama. This month marks a new day for the soap and a new direction for Scott's character. The show had announced that Fish and semi-bad boy Kyle Lewis are set to be a romantic pairing. In the coming weeks, the powers that be at One Life have stated that each week a little more of the story will be revealed until it kicks into high gear at the end of this month.

Advocate.com caught up with Scott Evans and talked 'Fish,' dating, brotherly love, coming out, and gay romance on daytime.

Advocate.com:We are all very excited that One Life to Live is tackling a gay story line!
Scott Evans: I am as well.

Did you know from the onset that this was going to be the direction that Officer Oliver Fish would eventually go down?
This came up much later. This role started off a small thing. I got the role in November of 2007. I did a few episodes the beginning of 2008, and then this year is when I started coming back to the show more regularly. The new story line is all news to me, which is exciting.

People took to Officer Fish. He was funny and charming. Is there a lot of you in there?
I try to bring some of it to that. I think I am a big nerd in real life. It's easy to play, but being a computer nerd though not so much. I am completely computer illiterate. When I am trying to pretend to know what I am talking about, it is definitely all fake.

OLTL fans are a bit confused by the announcement that Fish will be involved in a gay story line, when he slept with Stacy [Crystal Hunt] a while back.
I did sleep with Stacy. I had a one-night stand with her.

So this begs the question: Is he gay or has he swung both ways?
There was some experimentation by him in college. This new story line is going to explore his journey dealing with it.

So Fish will be struggling with coming to terms with himself and his sexual identity?
It's going to be a struggle, and it's been a struggle. We have been working on that the last couple of weeks, and coming up, he's going to be working on it, and dealing with coming out and seeing where that goes.

Fish is living with Cristian and Layla. Will they be instrumental in helping him figure himself out?
Yes. I just moved in with them. They will be extremely instrumental with him in the coming months. Oliver decides he is interested in Layla, and that is where he starts to focus all of his energy on, to sort of put the gay background for him on the back burner. It does not quite work out, but then they become very instrumental in helping Fish deal with his own issues.

How is working with your soon-to-be love interest, Brett Claywell [Kyle]?
He is awesome, and is so great. Kyle is so much fun on-set and always joking around. He is fantastic!

Their backstory seemed to revolve around being in the KAD fraternity house in college. We saw Fish mention this to him during the recent serial killer story line. What is their background?
The background between us is there was some sort of relationship that happened between us when we were in college together. We were frat brothers and something happened. We were separate for a while, and now he is back in town. He has completely thrown me off, and messing with my head.

Has that been a challenge to play, because in the serial killer story line, you two had crossed paths revolving around Kyle's criminal activities?
Right, that was not our initial main focus. I was this police officer and he was this guy causing all this trouble. I think that is what caused the extra tension there, and all the stuff that happened to us before was just sort of in the mix there, but we weren't playing anything into that.