30 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | NEWS
Qsaltlake.com |
Issue 337 |
JULY, 2022
Johnny Sibilly keeps ascending to new career heights with ‘Queer as Folk’ and ‘Hacks’ BY CHRIS AZZOPARDI
If you
think you’ve heard the name Johnny Sibilly, you have. Or at the very least you’ve seen him, whether on FX’s groundbreaking trans-focused series “Pose,” where the 34-year-old actor had a three-episode stint as Costas Perez, or on HBO’s “Hacks,” appearing alongside Jean Smart in one of last year’s best new shows. That series is currently in its second season (and still just as deliciously queer). But the show guaranteed to give Sibilly’s profile a generous boost is his role on the reboot of “Queer as Folk,” where he plays Noah, a smoke-and-mirrors lawyer. Groundbreaking when it premiered in the U.K. in 1999 and then in the U.S. in 2000, the show was one of the more authentic representations of LGBTQ+ life when it premiered, spotlighting important political and cultural LGBTQ+ issues alongside frank depictions of queer sex. Peacock’s new “Queer as Folk” understands what the show was then and what, in 2022, it has to be now. So, naturally, there’s sex. And lots of it. Orgies, toys, full-view anal. Sex that looks real enough for it to appear to be unsimulated. But this self-proclaimed “reimagining” also knows that being a queer person in our modern day means, in some ways, what it did in 2000: homophobia, fear and acts of anti-queer violence so horrific they hurt your heart. The trailer doesn’t hide the fact that the first episode is a hard, gutting and emotional watch: reminiscent of the Pulse nightclub tragedy in 2016, there’s a shooting at Babylon, the local gay club. Here, Sibilly talks about the importance of threading that hard-to-watch narrative into this reboot, the detailed conversations the “Folk” crew had about queer sex onset, and why he’ll continue to play queer characters.
How have you been doing? You’ve been really busy. Yeah. With the pandemic and everything, and being so busy, it’s been truly a blessing. I’m so happy to be working and to be doing this. I’m really grateful. During the beginning of the pandemic, were you afraid of work drying up? It’s funny. At the beginning of the pandemic, it was like, “Ha, now the rest of the world knows what it feels like to be an actor or an artist, where your job isn’t guaranteed.” And then, after a while, it was like, “Oh, wait. OK. What’s going on?” But then, I remember I got the call for “Hacks,” the first season, and I was like, “Oh, yes. Yes, we’ll do this.” [I filmed] that in the height of the pandemic, and then “Queer as Folk” when things were tapering down. But then, all the variants were another journey, but here we are. It sounds like the producers of “Hacks” just called you. Or Jean Smart personally called you. (Laughs.) She’s like, “I don’t know who you are, but I think you’d be great.” Yeah, no. “Hacks” was interesting, because it wasn’t... I auditioned for it, but it PHOTO: HBO
