It not very often that one openly gay actor gets replaced by another one in a movie, but that’s what’s happened with the indie 6 Dance Lessons in 6 Weeks. Will & Grace’s Sean Hayes was due to star opposite Gena Rowlands in the movie, but he’s had to drop out (probably because he’s busy working on a pilot for a possible new TV show), and has been replaced by the hotness that is Cheyenne Jackson.
Jackson will play high-spirited dance instructor Michael Minetti (Cheyenne’s years on Broadway in the likes of Xanadu, The Performers and Damn Yankees should have prepared him well to get his dance on). As you may have guessed from Hayes being replaced by Jackson, Michael is gay.
Deadline reports that ‘Gena Rowlands co-stars as Lily Harrison, a retiree who hires Minetti to give her private dance lessons in her St. Petersburg Beach, FL condo. The unlikely pair soon develop a friendship apart from dance.’ The relationship starts with lies – she pretending her husband is still alive, him saying he’s married to a woman – but soon deepens into something more, with both coming to understand things about the other beyond the stereotypes.
6 Dance Lessons is based on the hit play by Richard Alfieri, which has had a Broadway run and has been seen in 20 countries. Arthur Allan Seidelman directs the film version from a screenplay by Alfieri. Jackson will next be seen opposite Michael Douglas and Matt Damon in HBO’s Behind The Candelabra.
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