NEWS

Mark Indelicato is best known for his role in Ugly Betty, where he played Betty’s camp, fashion-obsessed nephew. Now 18 years old, he’s joined the cast of queer filmmaker Greg Araki’s White Bird (sometime referred to as White Bird In A Blizzard), alongside the previously cast Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Gabourey Sidibe, Christopher Meloni and Shiloh Fernandez.

The movie is about a young woman who loses control of her life when her mother disappears. Woodley will be playing the main part, but it’s not clear how the other actors will play into the story, although Variety reports that Indelicato will portray an outcast in a middle class school.

Indelicato knows something about that, as he’s previously talked about the death threats and abuse he received when he was playing a teenaged gay character on Ugly Betty, especially after it was widely reported that he himself was gay.

It’s not been revealed if being gay is why his character is an outcast in White Bird, but as Araki brings a very queer sensibility to everything he’s made – from Doom Generation to Kaboom! – we wouldn’t be surprised.

Mary Lynn Rajskub is one of those actresses who you may not know the name of, but you probably recognise her from roles in the likes of 24, Julie & Julia, Sweet Home Alabama and Little Miss Sunshine. When she played a lesbian in Sunshine Cleaning, she admitted to having experiences with women, but it’s comments in her latest podcast that have had people asking more about her sexuality.

In the cast she says, “Recently I went through all my stuff in the entire house and went through everything damaged or unuseful or I don’t love. That’s how I ended up looking through this box of photos and then. Oh! it’s the hot waitress from El Torito Grill. I dated her. Yeah, that happened. I mean I liked my life in the ’90s but I didn’t feel like going back there. The picture of this girl and I, realizing I used to date her and I had blocked it out, shoved it into a black hole of my unconsciousness. There it was staring at me in the face, taunting me. ‘Oh don’t act like you forgot me. Here I am!'”

Now she’s been talking to AfterEllen about it, saying about her sexuality, “It’s weird because i do believe in grey areas, but for some reason, just you saying it’s more fluid, makes me be like ‘No, it’s not!’ because I want to label everything. But the truth of it is, for me and my personality, it is more fluid. It just is.”

As to why she’s happy to talk about it now but has shied away from mentioning female relationships before, “I’m more settled now in my life, which makes me feel — maybe because I’m more secure, I’m more comfortable talking about it. You would think when I was actually having a relationship with a woman or seeing women or having things or whatever, that I would be talking about it.”

As for the relationship she talks about in the podcast, “That was the one where I really made a go of it, in terms of calling it a relationship. I dated quite a few women and tried at different times to be like ‘This is my girlfriend,’ but it never really worked out. … And the story I describe with this woman, unfortunately, it was kind of crazy and that sort of became my barometer so I never really figured out if that was something that, cause it was sort of fueled by this melodramatic, stopping and starting, emotional. She wasn’t out yet and I certainly wasn’t out and I kind of equate my growing up and sort of having more success in my career and then she was in a relationship and then we did meet later, but that was just kind of a messed up relationship, unfortunately.”

If you want to see what else Mary Lynn has to say, head over to AfterEllen.

Joan Collins has had five weddings, so you’d hope she knows a little something about the institution of marriage. But what does the diva – who to some is a gay icon due to her role as Alexis Carrington in 80s soap Dynasty – think about gay marriage?

In an interview with The Advocate, she was initially a little reticent to say, “I’m not one of [those people]. Again, you’re getting into a political situation here, which I really don’t want to get involved in. Obviously, I have so many gay friends. Many of them are married, many of them have children, many of them are in civil partnerships. I also have many heterosexual friends who are in the same situations. It’s up to the individual.”

She was drawn into the question by being asked about the sanctity of marriage in relation to her multiple partnerships, to which she replied, “I don’t really know what that means. Explain to me the sanctity of marriage and I’ll tell you.”

Collins was speaking to The Advocate ahead of her appearance – in the sitcom Happily Divorced, where she plays a thinly-veiled version of herself. The comedy stars Fran Drescher and John Michael Higgins as a couple who, after 18 years of marriage, have to change their lives when he reveals that he’s gay (it’s partially based on Drescher’s own marriage to Peter Marc Jacobson).