A Gay Role, but Nothing Like Will

By GREG HERNANDEZ

Chris Diamantopoulos may be playing the best gay pal of Debra Messing on a TV show, but the actor doesn’t want anyone to expect his role on USA Network’s “The Starter Wife” to resemble the Eric McCormack part on Messing’s last series, “Will & Grace.”

“I tell you, the truth of the matter is, if I would ever be compared to (Will), that would be an honor to me because that was such a success,” Chris said when we spoke recently. “Eric McCormack did such a spectacular job, the two of them were so amazing together.

“I don’t really see any similarities at all. He’s a gay character and he is one of her best friends, but it pretty much ends there. The show is also so very different that it doesn’t lend itself to the same humor.”

Chris got a lot of attention a few years back with his remarkably dead- on performance as Robin Williams in the made-for-television movie, “Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of ‘Mork & Mindy.’”

He is also an accomplished stage star, having appeared on Broadway in lead roles in “The Full Monty” and “Les Miserables.”

On “Wife,” he plays Rodney, the show’s most prominent gay character, who, he said, is quite three-dimensional.

“What I love is that they’ve written this guy as a man. A gay man, but as a man. … a person with extremely high moral values,” Chris said. “Gay happens to be one color of the rainbow, if you’ll pardon the pun. Not that his sexuality is overlooked because one of the first things that happens in the season is he gets into a very, very, very exciting, scandalous and illicit affair with a person that is huge in the public eye and it would be potentially very damaging to this person.”

On the show, most of Chris’ scenes are with Emmy winners Messing and Judy Davis, a situation he describes as “a dream, dream, dream.”

Chris has been married to “Ugly Betty” cast member Becki Newton for three years now and a two-series household has resulted in some tricky logistics. When he was doing his previous series, “State of Mind” on Lifetime, it was shooting in L.A. as was “Betty.” But “The Starter Wife” miniseries had been shot in Australia so when it got the green light as a series, Chris was a bit concerned.

“Of course, when I found out that it wasn’t shooting in Australia, I thought, ‘This is great, now we’ll both be in L.A. …except you’ll be in New York.”

“Ugly Betty,” which shot its first two seasons in Los Angeles, moved this year to New York, where the story is set anyway.

“The good news is we have a place, thank God, that we held onto in New York because we come from New York,” he said. “So we call it the other room theory. When she’s in New York she’s just in the other room; when I’m in L.A. I’m just in the other room.”

(c) 2008 Daily News; Los Angeles, Calif.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.