SF Native Alec Mapa Makes Bay Area Return for Gay Day at Great America
Well before landing his role as Ugly Betty’s roving fashion reporter, Alec Mapa and I met at the 2005 GLAAD Media Awards. Surprisingly, the San Francisco native not only remembers, he describes in detail snapping photos together on the red carpet. “The picture’s on Google,” Mapa notes, “And I look fat.”
These days a trim, happily-married (to a man!) Mapa is flirting with Hollywood’s mainstream. In addition to a primo gig on one of TV’s top-rated and most critically-acclaimed shows, he’s got parts lined up in Adam Sandler’s upcoming You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and the new Jennifer Aniston film Marley & Me from The Devil Wears Prada director David Frankel.
Still, he’s the same friendly, funny guy who treated me like an old schoolmate within minutes of that first meeting. To prepare for his Bay Area return - Friday, May 23, Mapa and Kelly Rowland of Destiny’s Child headline Gay & Lesbian Day at Paramount’s Great America - we caught up about his career, gay celebrities and being visible.
(Bay Times) You were hired onto Ugly Betty after performing at the GLAAD Media Awards. Many feel GLAAD panders to straight celebrities rather than elevating our own.
(Mapa) It’s kind of a double-edged sword. For one, it does bring attention to our community and how we’re being represented in the media. People will turn their eye to that when Ben Affleck is onstage, when Jake Gyllenhaal is giving the award. I feel like all the big celebrity culture is a means to an end.
That’s where we are in our evolution right now. In popular culture right now, I feel like we’re all in 8th grade and now the gays and lesbians are sitting at the popular kids’ table in the cafeteria. That’s what the GLAAD Awards is to me. We’re using them to affirm us in the eyes of the media, and it’s kind of working to a certain degree. I feel like as we evolve as a community, and as we evolve politically, I think the celebrity culture will become less and less necessary.
Hopefully we will develop and push our own celebrity culture.
Absolutely! Our celebrity culture will develop to the point where there will be 75 Ellens on television instead of just one. Personally, I was on Ellen last Christmas. That was huge for me. I’m a little gay boy from San Francisco, and I grew up watching Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas and all that stuff. Gay celebrities were completely closeted. It was like Charles Nelson Reilly, Paul Lynde, Wayland Flowers & Madame, and Rip Taylor.
And nobody even acknowledged they were gay.
It was all about them being witty and funny or outrageous. It was never about them being gay. Sexually, they were neutered. They were basically neutered.
They were effemininate men who were clowny and erudite, but they didn’t have any kind of sex. For me to be out on daytime television, with an audience which is primarily soccer moms, with a lesbian host who is the most popular television – she’s the #1 talk show personality in America, people have been polled – was huge. It was huge for me. It was kind of a surreal moment for me when I looked around and said, “Oh, my God. This is really happening.”
With the spectrum of ethnicities and sexualities represented on hits like Lost, Heroes and Ugly Betty, entertainment is finally reflecting true diversity.
I know! And that matters to the money people now. You can have a diverse cast, but what matters to the people in charge is that it’s a hit and that it’s making money. Now that it’s proving it does, it changes everything. It really is. Being visible matters. I travel all over the country for the Human Rights Campaign. I go to places like Ohio and Missouri. People in the middle of the country aren’t living the lives we are on the East Coast or the West Coast.
You can’t be as open as we are, and I’m reminded of that. I also do the cruises, the Atlantis Cruises, and I’m meeting people from all over the country. I’m always reminded it’s not safe for everybody. While the images are changing in the media, we still have a long way to go. This kid Lawrence King was murdered - this gay kid - and this was in the Los Angeles Unified School District. It wasn’t in Kentucky. It wasn’t in Alabama. We still have a ways to go in changing the consciousness.
That said, I really appreciate people like you who live openly in the public eye and don’t apologize for it. We each make a conscious decision as to how we live.
Totally. It matters to other people. That’s the thing about growing up in San Francisco. I used to go to church every day and then at night, I worked in this gay restaurant in Pacific Heights where everybody was gay and out. Those men were my mentors. They were all out and flamboyant and not being punished for it. To me, they were the most glamorous and sexy men I’d ever met in my entire life! You know, I used to take my dates to the restaurant, and they would fuss over us and make us dinner and make me feel so special. Without them, I could have been so much more screwed up than I was. I thank God for them. Part of me being out is I owe that to them.
For more information, visit: http://www.GayDayPGA.com
