MURRAY BARTLETT
Aussie star Murray Bartlett reveals what it’s like to take over one of TV’s most iconic gay roles
Squeaks, sorry, speaks about his iconic role as Mouse in Netflix’s Tales of the City revival
It’s not often a writer starts an article with a confession, but in this case I feel compelled. Compelled to admit that until about a month ago, I’d neither read Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City nor seen any of the previous three TV mini- series that were aired between 1994 and 2002. I was three when the first instalment was made, although I admit that in the age of internet streaming, it’s not much of an excuse.
But when my editor was looking for someone to interview Murray Bartlett ahead of the show’s new Netflix season, my Tales of the City ignorance didn’t matter. Like an under- qualified contestant on The Apprentice, trying to convince Lord Sugar they deserve another chance, I argued my case to speak to the dashing Mr Bartlett, promising to swat up in the weeks ahead of the interview.
After batting my eyelids a few times, permission was granted, and I set to work watching the first two seasons of the show, slowly growing attached to the central characters: 28 Barbary Lane’s mysterious, weedgrowing, transgender landlady Anna Madrigal, naïve country girl Mary Ann Singleton, free- spirited Mona Ramsey and her best friend Michael “Mouse” Tolliver, and heterosexual heartthrob Brian Hawkins. The Netflix sequel, set in modern- day San Francisco, has Olympia Dukakis, Laura Linney and Paul Gross reprising their roles as Anna, Mary Ann and Brian respectively, while Mona is absent and Mouse is played — excellently — by Murray.
The Aussie hunk, who turned 48 earlier this year, is the third actor to take on the role, and his boyish charm, good looks and ease on screen make it a match made in heaven.
While his acting CV dates back to the late Eighties, with roles primarily in soaps and TV dramas, Murray will be recognised by many Attitude readers as Dom in HBO’s too- short- lived, San Francisco- based series Looking. Sharp- eyed Sex and the City fans might also remember him as Carrie’s Aussie GBF ( back when the idea of a GBF didn’t elicit a major eye roll), and even as Randy Evans in Home and Away.
Despite two of his highest profile projects being set in San Francisco, Murray has called New York City home since the early Noughties, which proved handy for shooting the new Tales, given that 28 Barbary Lane was rebuilt at Silvercup Studios in The Bronx.
But it was in San Fran in the Nineties that he first discovered the Tales of the City world.
“I was staying with a friend who had a VHS copy of the first miniseries, so my initial connection with the city was interwoven with that, and I projected the Tales of the City world on to San Francisco,” he says. “It all became mashed up in a beautiful way.”
But how easily will Netflix viewers — many of whom won’t have seen the previous instalments — be able to get into the show, which has such a rich history and complex dynamics between the returning characters? After seeing previews of the new season, readers can be assured that showrunner Lauren Morelli has devised a season that caters both to Tales virgins and those who have waited and waited for a TV return to Maupin’s world. “I haven’t seen the show yet,” laughs Murray, “but my impression is that you don’t need to have seen the previous seasons. Hopefully people will love the characters and be interested to go back and watch earlier incarnations.”
All I’ll say is that, for me at least, they don’t quite have the same appeal without Murray.
You are the third actor to play Mouse. Was it daunting to step into his shoes?
I didn’t feel that way but I have so much love for Tales of the City. It’s something very special and kind of profound, I guess, to me and to a lot of people, because it [ originally] came at a time when there weren’t many — if any — characters and shows that were such a celebration of being openly gay and being yourself. I didn’t watch the second and third season, I don’t know why, but I really loved the first season and have watched that a number of times over the years. Then, last year, when I knew we were doing the show, I didn’t want to go back and watch any of them because I didn’t want to have those previous Michaels in my head.
So how did you prepare for the role?
I went back and read all the books but I didn’t think that much about the previous TV representations of Mouse. I wanted to take my impressions of him for the show from the books, to
“I have so much love for Tales of the City.
It’s something very special and profound”
let Armistead feed me Mouse through the books — that doesn’t sound quite right [ laughs]. But also, a lot of time has passed since we last saw Mouse and a lot has happened. A couple of decades have gone by, and he became HIV positive and suffered during the whole Aids epidemic, losing many friends. He’s been through this incredible transformation as a person. Essentially, he’s the same character in terms of being a boyish, kind of sensitive, brilliant spirit, but he’s got this depth of experience which in some ways makes him a very different character. So, there’s such a jump that I wasn’t nervous of being compared, or too concerned about how he’d been played before.
Well, everyone changes a lot over 20 years. So, what’s the source material for this new season? Is it a particular book in the series, or just loosely based around the world that Armistead created?
It’s inspired by the books, and obviously you’ve got the same characters but the show is not solidly based on any of the books. There are some story points that are, but it’s more like an exploration of that world. Armistead wasn’t in the writers’ room the entire time but he was consulted on the [ whole] story. From my understanding, the new series is made for the people who have followed the series before, but also — hopefully — for a new generation of people who will come to this world.
So, there are sort of tie- ups and continuations of stories of the existing characters, and the introduction of a whole new generation of characters who exist in San Francisco. It’s a mash up of old and new.
While we have those old characters returning, it’s also a bit of a changing of the guard, isn’t it? Still centred around the residents of 28 Barbary Lane, of course.
What’s lovely about it is that it’s a beautiful statement about what community can be and how diverse it can be, in terms of age, sexuality and gender identity. I think Barbary Lane was always that. Anna Madrigal was always of an older generation, she was this clever woman passing on these wise words to the next generation, and now it’s going to an even younger generation. Having those links between the younger and older generations is important, particularly in the queer community. Some of us are a little disconnected from those kinds of links, and that’s a shame. One of the things I’ve always loved about Tales of the City is seeing this community in a very sort of tribal sense, with the older and younger learning from each other.
Right. Most queer people don’t come from queer families, so the only way we can really learn about our shared history is from talking to the older generations, which I guess is where the idea of a chosen family comes in.
Absolutely, and especially for young queer people who may have been rejected by their family or don’t find that with their biological family. Something that always spoke to me about Tales of the City is that it’s sort of a calling to people who are in that position; that there’s a community out in the world that you can find family with. That’s something that we should all be aware of as human beings, regardless of our sexual preference or our gender identity. Perhaps if we had more of a sense of family as a human race we wouldn’t be fucking everything up! But back to the idea of sharing things between generations, I think it’s not only about the history of what gay people have been through, but also in terms of relationship models and how to navigate relationships. Particularly in the queer community where we often don’t have the same sort of relationship models as heterosexual people.
In the first couple of seasons of Tales, there are some zanier subplots that stood out as being slightly odd: there’s a child pornography storyline that’s never really explained, Burke’s amnesia, and the cannibalism cult. Those kind of storylines don’t really seem to be present in the new season, which I think makes sense given the nature of the show and modern audience expectations. Do you agree?
It was interesting. I love those elements of the Tales books. Armistead was writing them as a daily serial for the San Francisco Chronicle, so maybe he didn’t know where the story was going in those initial days. I mean, I’m sure he had some sort of plot in mind but he was just turning in the next episode as it was due. But it’s one of the things which makes the show fascinating. In this new Netflix season, there is still a suspenseful, mystery element; I guess that’s what you’d call it. But it doesn’t go to the point of cannibalism! They’re such joyous books, but then they dive into these very profound human moments, and at the same time they’ve got these mystery elements, so it’s bizarre and unique and it’s sometimes
“If we all had more a sense of family, we wouldn’t fuck everything up!”
tricky to put that into TV — particularly in today’s landscape. But I think it’s reflective of life. And I’ve always felt that San Francisco has this mystery to it; it’s full of these amazing characters and it feels a little larger than life.
That’s what I’m missing! I just need to go to San Francisco and it will all make more sense. Before this, you were in Looking, and there are certain similarities in the shows and between the characters you play, Mouse and Dom. Do you think they have a lot in common?
There are similarities in the fact they’re both gay men who live in San Francisco, but they’re very different in my mind. Mouse had lived in my consciousness before Looking, and I’ve got a clear impression of who he is. He seems very different to Dom. Someone asked me the other day: “Do you think they would have liked each other?” I think they probably would have but, having said that, Mouse has been through a lot while Dom was a little younger and missed some of that intensity. Mouse faced death, and not only his own death, but people around him and went through some profound times, and didn’t think he was going to come through it. I don’t think Dom ever faced that. He was cute, his looks were his currency for a long time, and he didn’t really dive into discovering what career he might want. Mouse was thrown into the big, deep questions of life through that Aids period, so his perspective on life and the world is completely different to Dom’s.
Mouse is HIV- positive and in a relationship with Ben in the new season; does his status come more into the frame more at some point?
Ben and Michael have been together for six months when we first see them. At that point in a relationship, in my experience anyway, you think: “Oh, so what is this, what’s the relationship, what are the specifics?” And one of those things is that
Mouse is positive, and Ben’s negative, so how do you navigate through that? You’re at that point in relationship where you talk about if you’re going to have unsafe sex or whether you’re monogamous or not. We see them do that. Mouse is a little bit older than me but we’re of a similar generation where we grew up with a lot of fear, and safe sex was just what you did, it was ingrained in you. But Ben is of a PrEP generation, where there’s a completely different attitude. These days, most people with HIV are probably undetectable, and there’s a whole kind of culture around sex positivity, which is fantastic and didn’t exist in the Eighties and Nineties when we were still trying to adjust our attitude and actions. Mouse carries all this fear and all this baggage that’s come from going through that period.
It’s amazing that the first series came out in 1993, when there would still have been so much fear around HIV and Aids. It must having been so progressive and comforting to see such a queer show on TV at the time. Is that how you felt watching it?
Absolutely. What really struck me was that sense of community, not just in Barbary Lane, but in the queer community more generally. Just these people living joyously and freely. I mean, dealing with things which were not necessarily all joyous, but having the possibility of living in this family environment and a community that was supportive and encouraged you to be who you are — that was very inspiring. And even though the first season and first book were set in the Seventies, it was still very progressive in the Nineties when it was on TV. I was living in Sydney at the time and the queer community was strong then and there was a lot of freedom, but there were still many battles to be fought. And seeing those positive images reflected in a TV show was so rare. And also having Anna Madrigal, a trans character and such a beautiful, compassionate, loving figure, was so new.
Going back to your relationship with Ben in the show, in the first episode there’s a moment when he teases Mouse and calls him
“There were battles to be fought and seeing
positive images in a TV show was so rare”
“daddy”. Presumably in real life, you get that from guys. Does it bother you? Is there an issue with ageism in the gay community?
I think daddy is kind of a hot term, so I don’t mind it. But Michael is a man- child in a way, he’s got this boyish spirit so it sits weirdly with him because he still feels too young to be seen that way. We’ve moved forwards to some extent, but in culture at large we still idolise youth, and I don’t think the queer community is immune from that. We could do a lot more to celebrate connections between older and younger generations.
And being called a daddy does carry currency within the gay community, doesn’t it?
Yeah. In the Eighties and Nineties, there was this whole thing about being hairless and muscled, and now there’s a huge bear community that’s also very inclusive of older generations of gay men. What’s considered sexy has become much more diverse in the gay community. But we kind of diversify into these groups and then tend to stay in them. We could afford to mix a little more. There’s room for intergenerational twink- bear mixes!
You’re a fairly hirsute guy, did that kind of hairless twink stereotype play on your mind when you were younger, looking around the gay community to see where you fitted in?
Yeah, it did. I was a bit of a hippy as a teenager so I didn’t really care. I was like: “It’s all natural, man.” But you see what’s around and what people are “gayifying” and what they consider attractive, so it’s difficult not to feel that pressure to be something you’re not. It didn’t play hugely into my life — I never waxed — but I did clip my chest and stuff lik e that just because I was brainwashed into thinking it was aesthetically pleasing.
From what I’ve seen of the new season, you and Charlie Barnett, who plays Ben, have some pretty intimate moments together. Was Looking good practice for when it came to filming those scenes?
[ Laughs]. I haven’t seen that yet, but Charlie’s an amazing guy and a great actor, and we both really wanted to make this relationship between Michael and Ben feel authentic. So, we tried to go for it during those sex scenes, to focus on the intimacy of them. But doing intimate scenes is always a little odd. You’re on a set with a hundred people watching you, all strangers effectively, and you’re very lucky when you find an actor who you actually connect with so that you’re both willing to be uninhibited to a certain extent. Charlie’s one of those people, and was well cast. I guess they sensed that we would have good chemistry, so it made it easier to do those things.
A lot of people were sad to see the end of Looking but happy to have a feature- length finale. Were you and the cast surprised when you found out it wasn’t being renewed for a third season?
We didn’t know, season to season, what would happen. And it was always kind of an experiment, in the way that I guess most shows are. I mean the intentions behind that show were so positive and we just wanted it t o be really wonderful. We poured so much love into it and absolutely loved the experience. It was really sad when we found out that we weren’t going into a third season, and obviously, we would have liked to have continued the love fest [ laughs]. But we had a good run and we were thrilled that we got to make the film, to have some kind of closure and tie up some of the stories.
It was criticised for presenting quite a narrow view of modern gay life and not being representative enough. Do you think those criticisms were valid?
It’s tricky when y ou’re just focusing on a few characters. There’s a lot of pressure on a queer show to be fully representative of the [ LGBTQ] community, and that’s kind of an impossible task. Looking was about this particular small group of characters, that was the seta- up. The writers tried to represent as much of the queer community as they could, but covering those stories and then trying to represent [ everyone] is difficult in a half- hour show. I’m proud of what we tried to do [ but] it’s understandable that the queer community wants to be fully represented. It didn’t escape me that there was a lot of criticism of Looking but as a queer community we should — as well as being constructively critical, which I think is really important — be mindful to be lifting each other up and not pulling each other down because the opportunities are few. We should celebrate that first, then look at how it could be better or whether we all felt represented or not. I think Tales of the City does a more comprehensiv e job and I hope people will like it.
Tales of the City is available on Netflix from 7 June
“Intimate scenes are always a little odd but we had a chemistry
and went for it”