Are You Ready to
Say "I'm Gay"?

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.

So, if the audience you're going after is both gay and straight, is it safe to assume the team behind the show is mixed? Yes, it's half and half. We're in the very beginning stages. We haven't started hiring what will be, ultimately, the whole team. It was really important to Bryn (Freedman, executive producer of Way Out and Intervention), who is a straight woman, that there be gay people associated with it. What we're doing right now is we're casting locally to film the pilot, but the stories we're really looking for -- what we'll do in the series is travel the country, go to places where people are risking true family rejection or the loss of a job by coming out.

I think it's also important to say that we aren't going to out these people and move on. We'll provide psychological support, therapy if it's needed. We're not going to hurt these people's lives and move on.

What sort of people and stories are you looking for? There's really no limit. We just want people who really want to come out -- who are willing to take this step. People can be out in many aspects of their life. The Hollywood exec who is married to his partner, sits on gay boards, but his parents back in Iowa don't know he's gay. When they come out to visit, he moves his partner out of the house. There are all ranges of coming out -- we just want to tell the stories and hope other people can learn from them.

- Way Out is actively casting people to appear in the pilot episode of the program. Visit www.WayOutDocumentary.com for more information.