With the well-timed arch of an eyebrow, or just a sharp glance, Nathan Lee Graham can command a scene in silence, well before he unleashes some artful, perfectly enunciated turn of phrase.

The actor has been brandishing his enviable diction and expressive mien for decades on Broadway, in The Wild Party and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, in films from Zoolander to Theater Camp, and on TV shows, like the new Hulu sitcom Mid-Century Modern, where he stars with Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer as three mature gay friends who move in together à la The Golden Girls.

The man’s diction pops even in conversation, as Graham and I chat over Zoom about his career as a performer, working with the cast of Mid-Century Modern, including the late Linda Lavin, and understanding, finally, that he does, in fact, have a style.

“I never thought of myself as having a style,” Graham says. “But when you’re told you have a style a million times, you sort of go, ‘Okay, well, I guess I have a style.’ Because I’m not making it up. My cadence is my cadence. Then, of course, if a character has to have a different cadence, I’m going to do that, too, but I’m still going to do it in a Nathan Lee Graham kind of way.”

On Mid-Century Modern — from Will & Grace creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan — Graham’s bringing his style to the role of Arthur. The ex-Vogue columnist gives up his place in New York City to take up residence in Palm Springs with Lane’s bra store mogul Bunny and Bomer’s airhead flight attendant Jerry.

Lavin adds a dash of class and sass as Bunny’s mother, Sybil, and a host of guest stars also make their way through Palm Springs. A multi-cam sitcom shot in front of a studio audience, the show has the feel of a throwback, while taking, per the title, a modern, sometimes bawdy, look at the lives of gay men over fifty.

Himself a gay man over fifty, Graham, who has been out throughout his career, started acting as a boy growing up in St. Louis. Theater was his first love, and Broadway was his dream. After years as a stage kid, acting in plays and the occasional TV or film part, then studying and devoting himself to his art, he made it.

In 2000, Graham made his Broadway debut in Michael LaChiusa’s The Wild Party alongside Toni Collette, Mandy Patinkin, Norm Lewis, Yancy Arias, Tonya Pinkins, Michael McElroy, and the legendary Eartha Kitt. He might happily have gone from The Wild Party right into another Broadway show had it not been for a guy named Derek Zoolander.

“I never had any intention of doing any film or TV,” he says. “But after The Wild Party closed, the very next day, Ben Stiller called me in through my agents. I said, ‘Well, what is this audition for?’ My agent said, ‘Just look stylish and go in there, he just wants to talk to you.'” Arriving at the meeting wearing Helmut Lang, the actor heard Stiller’s breathless pitch.

“He said, ‘Listen, there’s this TV show, I don’t know if you’ve seen this thing I do, this parody called Zoolander. It’s on VH1, and we’re making a film of it,” Graham recalls of the meeting. “‘I think you would be great in it. Your name would be Todd. You’re going to play Will Ferrell’s sidekick, his name is Jacobim Mugatu, and I don’t know anything beyond that. Do you want to do it?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, my show closed yesterday.'”

The Wild Party played its final matinee on a Sunday, with Zoolander director and star Stiller in the audience. “And I booked the first Zoolander the next day, that Monday,” says Graham.

“That’s when my adult film and TV career started, really,” he notes. “I did some little things as a kid, glorified extras on Bad News Bears Go to Japan, Sanford and Son, Fish, What’s Happening!!. I did little stuff then, because I was a part of the acting community already as a kid — but, in earnest, it started then. Once it started, it never really stopped.”

Now he’s having the time of his life on Mid-Century Modern playing sophisticated fashionista Arthur, achieving a delicate balance, according to executive producer David Kohan.

“For Nathan Lee, the challenge is to be a bit haughty and supercilious and kind of an intellectual snob, but yet be caring and loving and lovable,” Kohan points out. “That’s a tough melange of things to be, and he manages to pull it off so well. And he’s funny.”

Although, being funny in a multi-cam format, Graham explains, takes more than just crack timing. “I’m very disciplined, and when people say, ‘Oh, it looks like you’re having so much fun,’ I’m not having fun, but I do enjoy what I do,” he says.

However, “Mid-Century Modern is the first time that I’m actually having fun doing a show, because multi-cam is so hard that you have to have fun with it in order to even enjoy it, and embrace the pace of it.”

Graham is also embracing his aforementioned style, and sharpening that urbane wit that’s made him a standout among some heavy-hitting comedy casts. “I’ll be honest with you, I never thought I was funny,” he confesses. “I think that I’m bright and clever and witty, but funny never really entered my mind.”

Of course, funny is in the eye of the beholder, he acknowledges. “My agents joke about it all the time. I said, ‘You know what? I’m not really good at this comedy stuff.’ And they bring it up every single time: ‘So Nathan, how’s the comedy stuff going?'” Based on the career he’s having, it seems to be going just fine.

METRO WEEKLY: Recently, friends and I were talking about how we address our namesakes, because in Spanish they have a word, tocayo. And in Portuguese, the Brazilians like to use xará. I have a friend, André. We call each other xará. What do you and Mr. Lane call each other?

NATHAN LEE GRAHAM: We call each other Nathan because we have big egos. [Laughs.] That’s so not true, but we do call each other Nathan, because it’s very rare to work with someone who has the same name as you if it’s not Chris or Michael or Mark or Paul. And I’m just using the male names. It’s exciting to have someone named Nathan, and our esteemed director, Jimmy Burrows, gets such a kick out of it because he’s never worked with two Nathans before at the same time. So I’m called Nathan Lee on the set, and Nathan Lane is just called Nathan, and we enjoy calling each other that. It’s never said without some sort of wink and a nod: “So, Nathan…” It’s nice.

MW: Had you worked with Nathan or Matt Bomer before, or had you even met?

GRAHAM: We’ve met socially at galas and things like that, or I’ve met them backstage at something they were performing in or something I was performing in, but we’ve never worked together and never really knew each other. So this has just been the best thing possible.

MW: Was there any trepidation about playing such old friends? I mean, it’s acting, but I guess any trepidation whatsoever about stepping into this part?

GRAHAM: Well, when I did the chemistry test with Nathan, I was very much looking forward to that because it was vital that the chemistry went well, because we are supposed to be playing old friends. And then, of course, with Matt, we have so many mutual friends in common. Well, Nathan as well, and the late Linda Lavin, we all have so many actual friends in common that it wasn’t that hard of a stretch for us.

And we all have theater backgrounds, and in the theater, ensembles have to come together immediately. There’s no time for pretense. You have to be vulnerable right away because you don’t have the time not to be. And so you become very intimate very quickly, without any words spoken.

And with us, we all had to have this common goal of making the show as good as possible, so we just all let our hair down and just went right to it. A lot of things were unspoken because we had those theater backgrounds. And I would say the biggest factor is that we all were fans of each other’s work.

MW: That’s helpful.

GRAHAM: When you get to work with people that you already admire and you love their work, and they feel the same about you, and they say so — we all said so — you know that there’s no sort of false pretense or ego involved, because you’re just like, “Oh my God, I’m such a fan and I’m looking so forward to this.” And so when a ball is tossed in the air, someone catches it, and if it falls, someone picks it up and tosses it again. So it’s just really exciting to be in the room with these amazing people.

They’re so amazing, and it shows. I mean, people who have seen the first season go like, “This show’s been going on for a long time.” Well, that’s because we just really like each other, and we text each other outside of the set and go to dinner and all that sort of thing, too. You don’t do that with people you don’t care for. Because you’re being paid too much money to fool with people you don’t want to be fooling with. It’s like, when you are being compensated for your work, it is the actual human being that you want to hang out with beyond that, that makes that happen. And so wanting to get to know these gentlemen and the lovely Linda Lavin better has been such a treat. And I thank God that Linda forced me to do things I did not want to do, as a Virgo and as an introvert, but she forced me to go to things with her outside of the set. I was like, “Oh, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to go there.” And then, of course, I did.

MW: Like?

GRAHAM: Well, the night after the election that we won’t speak of —

MW: Maybe later.

GRAHAM: — she invited me to the Catalina Jazz Club, which is a famous jazz room club in Hollywood. And she was going to be singing some Rodgers and Hart, and I love Rodgers and Hart, and the wonderful pianist Billy Stritch and the wonderful host Jim Caruso were having their night called Cast Party. And she and her wonderful husband Steve said, “Please come. It’ll make you feel better.” And I was like, whatever. So, I go, and of course, it did make me feel better. They forced me to sing as well, and she filmed the whole thing on her phone. And then when I sat down, she goes, “Oh fuck. You can do that too?” in the most supportive, glorious way, because that’s who she was. She was so supportive in every way, and such a master of everything — working from the age of five to 87, literally, and going out of here blazing like the star she was.

I went to dinner with her. She invited me to Thanksgiving in Malibu. I went. I was living in Beverly Hills — I don’t know if you know how far away that is, but it’s not around the corner, on your day off. Every time I did something with her, it was just a blessing. And I’m so glad I did.

MW: I was checking out everybody’s resumés and Broadway credits. Her list of Broadway credits is looong. Did you see her on stage?

GRAHAM: Oh yeah. Many times. Tale of the Allergist’s Wife. I saw her the night after she won the Tony for Broadway Bound [for Best Actress in a play]. The night after. And if I could tell you, as I’ve told many people, that you just don’t get a better night than that, after a person has won a Tony Award and they’re performing in that role the very next night. I mean, she could barely get started with the play because of all the applause. And it was just, oh, I’ll never forget that moment. I’ll never forget it.

So yes, I saw her in many plays. And of course, I’ve known her work. I knew her work before Alice because, even though I was a kid, I was a theater kid, so I knew my theater history. And then of course when I studied it and all of that. But please, I sang the theme song to Alice when I first saw her on the set of Mid-Century Modern, and we started singing it together, in harmony.

MW: Oh, my God, that would be awesome.

GRAHAM: It was. And she was awesome. But you know what? I still feel like she’s around. She’s the spiritual showrunner of our show. She is the puppet master. She is the glue. She’s making all of this shit happen, and I just still feel her so close to all of us, and so close to the show. That will never go away.

MW: Somebody else you’re working with on that show is James Burrows, just because, specifically working with Mutchnick and Kohan, Burrows famously directed every single episode of Will and Grace, and he directed your whole season. What is it about James Burrows as a sitcom director? What does he have? What’s his thing?

GRAHAM: Well, first of all, he understands talent. So that’s a huge thing. And he understands what funny means, and he understands what situation comedy actually is. Out of some sort of tragedy comes this wonderful comedy. So you have these situations that could be taken another way, could be completely dramatic and nothing funny about them, but he knows how to lift the comedy out of these situations. And really the timing is so excellent, and he’s so good at making these situations come to life and getting the best out of each individual actor, understanding their rhythms. A lot of it is unspoken.

I believe we crossed paths when I did The Comeback. I think he did one episode of The Comeback. And so that’s when I initially met him. I always knew about “The Godfather of Sitcom,” but who doesn’t and who shouldn’t. But as we’ve gone through Mid-Century Modern, he’s learned my idiosyncrasies and patterns already. Because he’s so sharp and so quick, we’ll be doing something, I’m about to flub and he’ll stop me before I flub, “Hold it. Wait. Wait. [Pauses.] Okay. Nathan Lee, go.”

He’s breathing with all of his actors. He’s got all these cameras everywhere. He’s catching shots, he’s catching my lines with no audible lines all the time, my reactions, which is, for those out there who don’t know what facial expressions mean, it’s called acting. [Laughs.] I often hear, “Nathan, I love your facial expressions.” I said, “Thank you so much. I’m acting.” That’s what they are.

MW: That’s the job.

GRAHAM: That’s why they happen. But he’s just so wonderful at that. At listening and breathing with his company, and being so efficient on the set and giving you the confidence to explore. He’s really excellent at that as well. So he is an actor’s dream in that way. He moves very quickly and moves very fast. And once you understand what the rhythm is and what the tempo is, you want to jump on board or you’re going to miss that stop, you’re going to miss the train. It’s exciting. He’s very exciting.

MW: People are referring to the show as a gay Golden Girls. There are similarities in the situation, but it’s also very different. Not only because they’re gay men, but Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche were strangers to each other. While Jerry, Bunny, and Arthur —

GRAHAM: My step-father’s name.

MW: Oh, way to go, Art. Jerry, Bunny and Arthur have lots of history, which is a different situation. Can you talk to me about putting that into the characters, all of their history, which gets more complicated, and we won’t even talk about that.

GRAHAM: Listen, first of all, if you want to compare our hopefully new hit show to a classic hit show, be my guest. Yes, there are some similarities that will be drawn together because you have adults deciding to move in together, and there’s even a grotto and a lanai. So, sure.

Beyond that, it is its own thing. And that’s what makes it so special. I think anyone who happens to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community understands the special bond that you have with friends that are chosen family, and the machinations and the trials and tribulations you go through with that said family over many, many, many years. How you always come back to the people that you trust and that you love, even if you have a falling out, even if you have a disagreement, hopefully you can get beyond that. And occasionally there might even be a tryst or two within that community. I’ve seen gaggles of friends, straight and gay, that were all exes at some point. Because you came together for some reason, and hopefully there were some sort of friendship bonds there.

On our show, we are longtime friends and one of those friends happens to leave us. So the chain is sort of broken. And I think what happens is that you want to gravitate towards the people that were a part of that chain, to feel whole again. So that is what’s happened with Mid-Century Modern. It’s like, “Well, we’re getting older, we’re still, all three of us, single. Why not try this? Bunny has a lot of money. I have a lot of money if I live in Iowa, but I live in New York, so I need to get there too. And Jerry is not happy living in Atlanta, so he can fly from anywhere being a flight attendant.” So it makes sense to us, and let’s give it a try. It’s something new. It’s something exciting. And you could be in worse places than Palm Springs as you get older, for a gay or a straight. Which is why it’s so great for anyone to watch the show, because if you want to laugh and you like some heartfelt moments sprinkled throughout the show, well, this show is for you.

MW: Another relatable experience Arthur has on the show is that he reaches out to reconcile with his high school girlfriend.

GRAHAM: Yes. The divine Kim Coles.

MW: That was a well-done scene. You guys are great in it. Do you have any high school ex-girlfriends?

GRAHAM: [Laughs loudly.]

MW: I think we all do. And are you still friends?

GRAHAM: Listen, what do they say? I don’t know if we can put this in print, but there are the platinum card gays and then the gold card gays. The distinguishing thing being one is the C-section, one is a natural birth. I’m a gold card, but I’ve never actually, uh, had relations with the opposite sex myself personally. Now, Arthur has had way more sex than I’ve ever had, as you can see on the show —

MW: Well, I wouldn’t know that just by seeing the show.

GRAHAM: [Laughs.] Well, I mean, we talk about sex all the fucking time, and we’re all having it. And I’m not even on an app. Nathan Lee Graham. So I’ve never actually had that experience before. And it was so fun to play, because to live in that space, especially with the divine Kim Coles. I mean, we had such a hoot, and we know each other. So we had so much fun doing that.

Now if I go back in my mind’s eye, I did go to prom with a girl, I’ll leave her name out of it. She was and is divine. She’s a wonderful, wonderful woman. And I do remember at one point there was some kissing happening, which I wasn’t too into, but we were there, and I apologized for that. So that is about as far as I’ve ever gotten with that sort of thing. And we did technically date, but she was president of student council, and I was famous in high school, so it just fit. I designed her prom dress to match my tie and tails.

MW: The signs.

GRAHAM: So that all worked out nicely. And when we broke up, it was amiable and all that sort of thing. She certainly understood and I certainly understood. But that was about it. I’ve never had anything beyond that. And I don’t want to be crass or anything like that, but I really have never even seen a lot of things, so there’s that too.

MW: What were you famous for in high school?

GRAHAM: Well, I was a musical theater kid. Lots of kids who played sports, got their letters from sports. I got mine from theater and from journalism and from oratory kinds of things, debates and stuff like that, and singing, of course. So yeah, that’s why. I was a well-known thespian in the arts, even in high school.

MW: Is that what brought you from the Midwest to New York?

GRAHAM: Oh, sure. I was born in St. Louis. I was back and forth between California — Los Angeles and St. Louis — all of my adolescent life, because of my parents and their divorce and their remarriages.

MW: I was going to say. Divorced kid. Divorced kid here.

GRAHAM: Yeah. And then I had two sets because they both got remarried right away. And then my grandparents also lived in California. So I was going to school in St. Louis. And then the day after school was out, I was in California until the day before school started again. I split my time that way between California and Missouri, and then went to a wonderful school in Missouri, Webster University Conservatory. Lots of lovely people have gone to that school. Wonderful artists. It’s called the Sargent Conservatory at Webster University now. And because my parents didn’t want me to go directly to New York, I went to Chicago to appease them for a year, got my equity card and the rest was history. But they always had me in some sort of performing arts schools, kindergarten all the way through. I was always in some sort of extracurricular program for the arts. Always. I always knew what I was going to do. My parents always knew what I was going to do. My grandparents knew what I was going to do, so they put me in all of these programs and I’m just not good for anything else.

MW: In the show, Linda Lavin’s character of Sybil has a fantastic line when she’s asked if she could live with her best friends. She says she couldn’t live with her friend Judy because the way Judy chews, she can even make bananas crunch. That kills me, that line.

GRAHAM: It’s so good. The writing is the best writing in television, as far as I’m concerned.

MW: Could you imagine living with best friends?

GRAHAM: I mean, I have in the past, and it was wonderful to have a shoulder to lean on and to cry upon. I do not think that it’s possible now as much, because I’m so set in my ways. Well, let me put it to you this way, it would perhaps be possible if the place were large enough. So if we had a villa or a palazzo and I had my own wing, sure. I have to have my own space, even with a partner, I have to have my own bathroom. I must have it. I’m sort of even into separate beds, and then there being a conjugal bed.

MW: That works for a lot of people.

GRAHAM: Yes, a bed for sexy time. For lovemaking.

MW: If the house is big enough.

GRAHAM: Yeah. And that’s something that I’ve come to, here in my late fifties — well, I’m 56, I’ll be 57 in September — that I hadn’t thought of before, but now I’m like, yeah, we have to have space in order to live together. I have to have space. So that’s more than possible, to meet up with someone in the middle, and have dinner then go off to our corners. I love that.

MW: Where is your space right now? Do you live in New York?

GRAHAM: I do. The Upper West Side, honey. Of Manhattan!

MW: That’s a good segue to stage because, first of all, I saw The Wild Party.

GRAHAM: I did that with one of my best friends to this day, Mr. Michael McElroy, who recently was a professor at Howard, and he’s back at NYU now. And he’s one of my dearest, dearest friends. You talk about working with friends, my God. And then, of course, I worked with my mentor on that show, Eartha Kitt. I mean, listen, that cast is the T-H-E-E cast. That was so wonderful. Anyway, please carry on with your question.

MW: You really went right where I wanted to go because you are the second person I’ve interviewed in a row who worked with Eartha Kitt. My last interview was Bruce Vilanch —

GRAHAM: Oh, Bruce!

MW: Who co-wrote her song “Where is My Man?” Do you remember that song? I didn’t know that song.

GRAHAM: Yeah, of course. [Doing a perfect Eartha Kitt] “I don’t want to be alone, where is my baby?/I don’t want to be alone, where is my man?”

MW: My memories of that Wild Party are that it was a very sexy show. I also saw the Off-Broadway one [both productions had NYC runs in early 2000], and was surprised that the Broadway one was the sexier of the two. Also, I remember very distinctly Eartha Kitt onstage, shaped like Betty Boop, just like that, a line with the head on top. And she was the only person in the room. What was your experience of being around Ms. Kitt?

GRAHAM: Well, my first encounter was when I was a teenager because she would travel with, sometimes her own people, but sometimes she would do an outreach thing with the Dunham dancers and go to different schools. She would do that. Of course, I started coming to New York in the early eighties as a kid, instead of going to Florida for spring break. I would come here and see eleven shows and my parents would allow it. Thinking back on that, that’s crazy that they allowed me to do that, but I did.

So I started seeing her at Café Carlyle years and years ago when I had no business being in there, spending whatever allowance that I had all on one night. But that is how that started. And I had always been a follower, always been an admirer. Then when we finally worked together, we became fast friends, until her dying day. I saw her up until the point where she wasn’t going out as much, but she worked pretty much up until almost to the end, because I remember all the recording equipment in her bedroom when she was still recording The Emperor’s Last Groove, that wonderful animated series that she won Emmys for.

I was doing a show right before she passed that Christmas of 2008. A lot of things happened in 2008. Obama was elected. I was doing a wonderful play by Tarell Alvin McCraney called Wig Out!, and she came to the opening of it. And I told the cast members that she was coming. I never exaggerate about anything, so I don’t know why people don’t believe me. I’m like, have you met me? So of course, after the show, she burst through the dressing room. “Naaaathan.” And they all gagged a thousand gags, right? They were gobsmacked. And I just said, “Um-hm.” She came and she hung out with us, and she was under strict doctor’s orders, even at that point, not to even go out, but she took a car down from Westchester — or was she in Westport or Bedford? I can’t remember right now. And came down and saw the show and supported me and all the things.

At that time, I was still bi-coastal, and she wanted me to be back in New York permanently. She would always call Hollywood, Hollywood. She would never say L.A. And we were just friends to the end. I mean, so many intimate things that she shared with me. So much wonderful advice. I destroyed every tape, every voice message that she would leave me. Because people were selling those things on eBay. So I was so afraid and so paranoid that I destroyed the little recording tapes that, y’know, we had these answering machines still then, in the early aughts.

She would call and she would say, “Nathan, it’s Eartha.” And I’d think to myself, who else is talking like this? She would always announce who she was. And yeah, I pinch myself all the time over that relationship because it was far deeper than I ever could have imagined. And I just was corresponding with Kitt Shapiro, her daughter, and she said, “You know, she really, really loved you so much.” And that was just so lovely to me. She continues to be an inspiration to me. So that relationship is deep and abiding, and I can look on one of my walls over here at one of the pictures she signed, “To my faithful, Nathan.” So yeah, I love her so much.

MW: And if they needed a new Yzma, I could totally see you pulling that off.

GRAHAM: I certainly could do it. I’m not going to even deny that. I certainly could. Yeah, I agree. [Laughs.]

MW: So more recently, you were touring as Hermes in Hadestown.

GRAHAM: Yes. I came through D.C. as a matter of fact.

MW: I didn’t see you in D.C., I saw Levi Kreis.

GRAHAM: Oh, the first leg.

MW: Yeah, the first leg. I was going to ask you about Hadestown coming to the Kennedy Center, and since I saw it with Levi, I wasn’t aware that you had had that experience. You came here to the Kennedy Center to do it?

GRAHAM: No, I was at the National. It was the second year. So when Levi was there, I believe that it came through, and then there was a COVID thing, and they had to stop, and then they picked up a couple of more dates. And then it was the second year, and Levi didn’t want to go on with the second year, which most actors do a year and then leave. The same with me. But it was perfect timing because we were on strike. I had just finished doing a film called Theater Camp.

MW: Awesome movie.

GRAHAM: Yeah, a lovely gem of a movie. And we didn’t even get a chance to promote Theater Camp. So the fact that it did so well and won all these jury prizes at Sundance is a miracle. And I was like, well, we’re on strike, so this is the perfect opportunity, because, listen, I don’t want to go to the coffers and bleed them dry. So here I go off to do a national tour, and I hadn’t done a national tour since Family Matters was on the air, okay? That’s the late nineties. I mean, practically Golden Girls, for real. So it was so hard, because Hermes is onstage for two and a half hours, just leading the whole damn thing.

MW: He’s like the host.

GRAHAM: Yeah, a beautiful, wonderful show. And then the way I did it was very physical, and I really focused on Hermes being one of the gods, if you know what I mean. So I was like, well, this man has feathers on his sleeves and on his boots for a reason, he needs to fly. I had a wonderful time doing that, and the audiences seemed to enjoy it very much. And then when that was over, I was glad it was over, just because I’d worked so hard. And then of course, we were off strike. So it happened simultaneously. It was just beautiful the way it happened.

MW: Good Nathan Lee timing. Have you played many characters who are straight?

GRAHAM: I did up until 2000. Can you believe I hadn’t played anyone who was a part of the LGBTQ+ community until the year 2000? I couldn’t believe that myself. I had been trying, but what I was told several times in casting was, ‘We don’t know many gay characters the way you’re playing them.’ I said, “You mean like, with dimension? I mean, you can be fabulous and still be a real person.” They were like, “Well, yeah.” I said, “Well, I’m not going to come in here and be a buffoon with a boa. I can come in here and be fabulous with a boa and have dimension.”

So I wasn’t booking anything that was a part of the gay community, because I was being too naturalistic with it, I was told. And I was like, well, hopefully that’ll stop. And then I made a conscious decision. I said, listen, none of my straight friends, wonderful straight colleagues, ever complain about playing straight roles. So why would I complain about playing gay ones? I need to see that all the time. I need to see the representation, and I need to see it in good writing. Full dimension, fully thrashed out human behavior. I really sought those roles, and I wanted to do them all the time. And there were a couple of gay colleagues of mine who said, “Well, you really should stay in the closet.” And this is in the early nineties. “You should stay in the closet if you want to work, and you should do as many straight roles as possible so they’ll know that you’re legitimately good at acting.” Ha! And this just seemed ridiculous to me.

So I’ve never been in the closet, never was. Never. Not once. And it didn’t make any sense to me that that was the marker of being a good actor, playing a straight role. If anything, it was that you were double acting. I had a really great teacher at school, Susan Gregg, who just really helped me with that very early on. So it was important for me to demand and seek good writing first and foremost. And even if, y’know, in Zoolander, I had six lines — six lines! — but they were six important lines, and they were placed importantly throughout the film, the beginning, middle, and end. And you remember what I did. And that’s the whole point. If you get one or two laughs in a film, that’s a big deal. Where you’ve made people across the world laugh together at the same time. That’s powerful. More than once, or once. And I knew this. And even when I do master classes, I tell the students, “Be good in every frame,” because no matter how they splice it up, you’re always going to have something. Even the most minute things.

And so I’ve always enjoyed all of the roles that I’ve done. I’ve always enjoyed them. They’ve always been these wonderful nuggets in time that people gravitate to. And I’ve had so many young people say, “Oh my God, I saw you in this. I saw you in this. And I felt like I mattered. And I walked out with a smile on my face,” or “I walked out saying, ‘I do exist.'” And that’s a big deal. That’s a big deal.

MW: So I think we covered it. And thank you very much for sharing all your messages with me. I appreciate the time.

GRAHAM: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Are you going to do anything during World Pride?

MW: I mean, I have no idea how I will cover it for this magazine. As a person, I think there will be marching and demonstrating going on for once that really isn’t just about waving a flag and happiness. And that’s what I’m looking forward to. I was at a rally for the Kennedy Center last weekend. What are your thoughts on the Kennedy Center takeover?

GRAHAM: Well, my thoughts are these: we shouldn’t do anything there. My initial thought is to boycott it. That’s my initial thought. And why do I say that? I say that because you don’t want to go where you’re not wanted or you’re not welcomed. And that’s what I mean by that. And that goes beyond any sort of politics. Theater is about bringing people together from all walks of life. So if you are diametrically opposed to bringing people together, then I don’t want any part of that. And there’s so many wonderful theaters in the D.C. area that need everyone’s attention now and need to be supported because who knows what’s happening with the NEA?

I say we move on. I don’t say that we forget about the Kennedy Center. I say that we put our focus in other theaters that welcome us all, and we work on the strategies for the Kennedy Center later. It’s such a wonderful institution, and it takes literally a village to make any kind of art happen. It is all about collaboration. So you guys can, whoever is dealing with it now, can deal with it, and we’ll put our energies elsewhere until it’s time.

Season 1 of Mid-Century Modern is now streaming on Hulu. Visit www.hulu.com.