Billy Crystal Says Homosexual Sex Scenes Shouldn't Be 'Shoved in Our Face' on TV
Actor Billy Crystal has offered his opinion about homosexuality and sex on TV, which he says should not be shoved in audiences' faces.
"Sometimes, it's just pushing it a little too far for my taste and I'm not going to reveal to you which ones [which shows] they are. I hope people don't abuse it and shove it in our face … to the point where it feels like an everyday kind of thing," Crystal told the audience at the Television Critics Association tour.
Crystal starred on ABC's series "Soap," where he played an openly gay character, Jodie Dallas, with a boyfriend played by Bob Seagren. The characters were often together and it was a relatively new world for homosexual characters on-screen.
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"It was very difficult at the time," Crystal explained. "Jodie was really the first recurring [gay] character on network television and it was a different time … it was 1977. So yeah, it was awkward. It was tough. I did it in front of a live audience and there were time when I would say to Bob, 'I love you,' and the audience would laugh nervously. I wanted to stop the taping and go, 'What is your problem?'"
However, Crystal later seemingly walked back his words and said that they applied to heterosexual couples on TV as well as homosexual couples.
"When it gets too far either visually now, that world exists because it does for the heterosexual world, it exists, and I don't want to see that either," he later said, according to Xfinity. "We live in a very scary time in many ways. You can't say this, you can't say that, you can't offend this group, that group. People come up to you and ask if you were offended. I don't understand that. That's offensive to me."
One of the series singled out by Crystal and another star, Josh Gad, was HBO's "Girls." He will next be seen in the new FX series "The Comedians"
