Did Luke Grimes Leave 'True Blood' Because He Didn't Want To Play A Gay Character?

I saw this article myself and I doubt it....He is currently working on Fifty Shades of Grey and his character is the brother of Christian Grey. While I don't know how they will play it in the movie, Eliot is a manwhore and is a try-sexual....that is he will try anything...One of the remarks Christian makes is, "He has effed most of Seattle, mainly women I have been told."

But still, I don't know if this is anything to roast the actor of the coals for. So he doesn't want to play gay...I am sure it happens.

Personally I think its more than okay. I mean, sure , acting is all about doing things you persoanlly might never do, but I would have to admire him for not bending to the current status quo where every story has to have a gay couple.

I think that today's shows are dangerously close to saying, okay, we have to have a gay character in the story, so let's have a stock gay character that will be funny and awkward and stereotypical. I remember there was a sitcom in the seventies that sort of started the trend. Some may remember it, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and it was thought of as prime time "adult sit com" and it had topics that included suburban life, infidelity, swapping, inter-racial dating, premarital sex, and had an openly gay character. Mary was sort of this babe in the woods who never quite got what it took to be in the "in" crowd and how she dealt with these things was the whole gist of the story.

But I also remember when a movie came out with Mark Hamill called 'Making Love' came out 1982 and Mark bravely plays a married man who is also a closeted gay man who falls in love with another man and has to make a choice. Now, that was a pretty daring move for someone who was potentially the next male romantic lead in any movie and this movie, though it was sensitive and careful really held Mark back as an actor because he was seen as the "gay" actor.
It wasn't fair to him, but that is how it works out today.

In the early 90's another up and coming actor Russell Crowe was in an independent film called the Sum of Us. It is set in Australia and he plays a young guy who has a father is ill and he takes him in and he has to come out to his dad because he is always trying to find him a Ms. Right, but Russell's character is gay and he his dad has to accept this. This film did not hurt Crowe at all, in fact, I think maybe I might be only one who knows about it...I just happened to watch it..

Of course there was Ellen DeGeneres who came out of the closet on her show Ellen, not just for her character but for herself and that seemed to kill her acting career for a while as people took their time to digest it. Some critics even said it was because she went from having a show about a woman who was sort of hapless and finds herself in these wild situations with her friends and family to being a show about being gay. Maybe it was. Maybe people were just trying to digest it and the "meal" was just too big. Now, she is a hot ticket on TV with her talk show and her Maybelline ads and her stand up stuff. There is even a gay lifestyle site that I often post here in the forum with TB news called AfterEllen.

But, with Luke Grimes, if he did decide to leave True Blood because he could not "play gay" the only thing I would tell him is that he evidently never saw the show. All the characters have experienced some sort of "gay" thing as a result of the vampire blood or their being engaged with Vampires. For example, Jason dreams of Warlow after having his blood. Lafayette tells Sookie he has dreams about Eric that are sexy and hot, Sam dreams of Bill after drinking a lot of his blood to trick and kill Maryanne. We have also had Eric seducing Talbot and we have been teased that Jason gets to have another dream about a male vampire, namely Eric. So, If I were Luke and I was signing the papers to play the character, I would assume that my character was likely to have some same sex scenes involving sex or at the least kissing. For some years now, the show has been called "the gay vampire" show.

I think, however, the news people are being pretty hard on him. There are just somethings you can't surmount. Luke may have thought he was able to do it, but discovered he could not. That is not a crime, nothing to hang him up by his thumbs for. As a writer the first thing you are told is write what you know and I try to always do that by doing research. When I was writing hot "dates" for the forum back in the day, I could write some stuff pretty much at ease. I had no problems. But writing gay scenes was rough because I have no frame of reference and it came out comical or silly. I tried never to be gross but I never got it...So maybe that is what Luke's deal is. He just doesn't get it.

But, I wish Luke lots of luck, he was awful pretty when he was James and we thought the world of him for his moral standards and handling the thing with Jessica with delicacy and grace and bravery. And good luck to the new guy. I think he is pretty cool...

I'm very glad the publicist set that straight. I still miss him but onwards and upwards as they say.