Members of The “Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy” Writers’ Room Chat with GLAAD About The Show’s LGBTQ Themes and Balancing Reality with Representation
Published on glaad.com
“Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy” premiered on Peacock, October 16 to extremely positive press and audience reactions. The series, which explores the story of John Wayne Gacy, disrupts exploitative patterns in the true crime genre by subverting expectations and focusing on the victims, their families, and the systems that allowed Gacy to get away with his crimes for so long.
As noted in a recent interview with showrunner Patrick Macmanus for The Hollywood Reporter, he enlisted GLAAD throughout the production.
GLAAD Associate Director of Entertainment, Dana Aliya Levinson, who with GLAAD Senior Entertainment Consultant, Ryan Mitchell, advised on the series, interviewed Macmanus and some of the series’ writers, Ahmadu Garba, Ashley Michel Hoban, Gregory Locklear, Sebastián Rea, and Matt White about how they deftly approached the LGBTQ themes in the show, balanced reality and representational sensitivities, and delivered a series that implores humanizing storytelling.
PLEASE NOTE: THE FOLLOWING CONVERSATION HAS BEEN EDITED FOR LENGTH AND CLARITY
Dana Aliya Levinson: One of the things that’s interesting about the show is that while explicit queerness on screen is only limited to a few episodes, given that most of Gacy’s victims were not gay or bisexual, the police’s assumptions about their sexual orientation and systemic homophobia affected the case so profoundly. This provides a unique queer lens to the series, which is something that many reviews have praised. How aware were you all of that through-line when you got started, and how did it develop?
Patrick Macmanus: If it’s okay with all of the writers on this, I’m going to be mostly quiet on this call. I’ve talked enough. So I would love for you all to talk about your experiences on this.
[Crickets]
Okay. I’ll help. Locklear. Do you have anything to say about that?
[Laughter]
Gregory Locklear: I knew a bit about the case just from being a true crime person. It’s something we talked about a lot together too. A lot of us are queer, but we’re constantly reminding each other that there is a bigger picture. It’s not just about queer people, it’s broadly about a swath of young men who were victims by virtue of their circumstances. Some were because they were queer. Others were on the fringes. But a lot of these boys were just trying to get a job. It’s something that we constantly reminded each other of so that we weren’t forgetting anybody.
Ahmadu Garba: I knew very little. But that quickly changed once we were doing the research. I’m not queer, but I do have the experience of being a Black man in this country, which is one thing, but these other writers sharing their own experiences in terms of preconceived notions and experiences with biases, for me it was a learning moment and also a very emotional time.
Sebastián Rea: I knew about Gacy, but hadn’t learned the details until working on this show. My initial ‘in’ was from the victims’ point of view. I related by nature of them being young and looking for a way out of their situation. Sometimes somebody presents an opportunity that may not seem nefarious, but then they take advantage. As a queer person, as a Latino person, as an immigrant, as an Indigenous person, I felt like the systemic issue is the biggest part of the story.
Matt White: I went into this not knowing a ton about him, but learned he was an equal opportunity predator. He used the socioeconomic situation of his victims to his advantage. These boys, many of them, came from families that were struggling and they needed money. He paid double the minimum wage. [Class dynamics] enabled him to keep under the radar for so long.
Ashley Michel Hoban: I knew about Gacy. I lived in Chicago for about six years. I went to undergrad there. I think he’s one of those stories that you think you know, because you’ve heard so many anecdotes. The opportunity to really dig in and come at it from the perspective of the people whose lives he took was a noble challenge.
Levinson: From an LGBTQ perspective, the media coverage of the Gacy story when the reporting first broke was salacious and homophobic. One of the things I appreciated in the show is that the episodes that are centered on victims who were gay or bisexual young men felt so joyful. Was that something that was stumbled upon or was that intentional?
Locklear: We really talked about that. I wrote the episode about John Szyc. Even though we know he was a victim, I wanted to tell this beautiful simple story of two queer kids going to prom. For me, the story was also personal because my uncle Georgie died of AIDS in 1983. If AIDS hadn’t taken him from me, I would’ve had a queer elder who could’ve advocated for me. It was important to me not to forget that pain, but also to find joy in working on a story like this.
Rea: For the sex worker episode, Billy and Dale’s episode is the one that I wrote, we were very conscious about showing the bad, but also showing the good. Even though these young people were on the streets, they had each other. I ran away from and tried to establish my life on my own terms without the help of my parents. Although that was very hard, there are so many people I still carry from that time that helped me and are my chosen family. When we were able to show that, it really gave us a chance to celebrate those aspects of our lives.
Hoban: Who says that because it really happened that it has to be this sort of salacious thing that’s exploiting death over life? Watching Johnny [Szyc] have his first kiss is equally important as anything else. I think that that was all clear to us pretty early on.
Garba: Yeah, just to add too, when we were shooting [the John Syzc] episode, it was pretty special being there and seeing Greg’s response. That was one of my favorite memories of being on set. I was like, wow. The stories that we tell matter whether they’re big or small, just showing humanity in what you do is important.
Locklear: Thank you for saying that Ahmadu. When I saw Johnny looking out at the party from behind him, I was that boy. I felt it. It was like being out of body, watching it and actually realizing how beautiful it was. And I had a really emotional response. That just speaks to how deeply connected every single one of us are at every aspect of the process of making the show.
Levinson: On the GLAAD side, there were many conversations about reconciling the reality of the case with fair representation. So while you have the queer joy represented, there was significant homophobia at the time. On this front, a character I found interesting was Rafael Tovar, the lead detective on the case. He feels like a man ahead of the curve, but his empathy for the boys never stretches beyond what would be believable for the time and place. How did you all thread that needle?
Garba: That’s a great question. At some point in our research, we found out that [Tovar] was the first Latin American detective in all of Des Plaines. We talked about that, trying to figure out how to bring in that story. But we were like, well, at that time he would want to assimilate as much as possible. However, it doesn’t take away from the fact that part of his empathy is [because of his experiences] being othered. So that empathy is the framework.
Hoban: It’s really important to remember our history. I think it is [about being] honest without being gratuitous. I was talking to my dad the other day about the way that the cops were talking about Donnelly [a young man who survived Gacy’s assault] specifically. And on the one hand he’s like, ‘I can’t believe it’. But then on the other hand he’s saying, ‘I can because I was there and that’s what it was like.’ I’m proud of where we landed. The show is indicting our culture as opposed to demonizing any one individual.
Levinson: The parents in the show are also interesting. Again, while most of the victims were not gay or bisexual, many of them were assumed to be, and so the question was raised to the parents by police. There are so many little moments of parents grappling with their own homophobia around their family members. I am curious to hear more about the writing of those characters and moments because there is so much empathy that you keep present for them, too.
White: I’m gay and did not come out until my late thirties. I will never forget the day of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando because at that point, I still hadn’t come out to my grandmother, who is one of my favorite people. I remember hearing stories of people who were killed; and the way their loved ones found out they were queer, was through their death. That really weighed on me. I called my grandmother later that day. Anytime I had to write a scene with the parents, that’s what I drew from because these boys, in the court of public opinion, were all framed as some sort of deviant and that deserved what they got. For the family members and their loved ones to be in that limbo, that’s the well that I drew on for those scenes.
Rea: Usually my first inclination is to show the parents as assholes because they did them wrong. But it’s been 15 years since I came out, and I’m only now understanding why my mom did what she did and why my dad felt the way that he did. We’re working on our relationship now. That helps you give them empathy because you see them as full people. And depicting that fine line, that could also give tools to parents out there today that are struggling with accepting their kids. That was also something we really tried to draw on.
Levinson: One of the storylines that really impressed me was the throuple episode that we get toward the end of the season. There were so many ways that could have gone sideways. Yet, instead, you really just feel like these are three people who were really honestly and truly in love with each other. How did that episode develop?
Locklear: I think everybody [in the room] had a very open mind and heart. So there was that to start. Jeffrey Rignall [one of the men in this relationship] also wrote a book with his partner, Ron, which went into detail. I met my partner as a third, and so really understood the dynamics of having a relationship between three people, which is very complicated. It’s not for everybody. I don’t think this is only specific to queer people, but I think because we have been othered so much, we are able to process things in a different way and be open to a broader spectrum of relational dynamics. I brought that to the story for sure.
White: We divided that episode in a half. And when Greg sent me his first draft of it, it was one of the best drafts of anything I’d read in a very, very long time. So proud of Greg and the work he did on that. I will also say [as a sidenote], in the research for that episode there’s a moment that still haunts me. When he went to the hospital after he was sexually assaulted by Gacy, the doctors and nurses had never heard of a man being raped before. It was a completely foreign concept to them to the point where the nurses were actually peeking in the door like [he was] a circus freak. That was eye-opening. I grew up with the homophobia of the eighties, but I never thought that it extended as far as the medical professionals of a major metropolitan city.
Levinson: I want to close us out with the big general question of what do you hope people take away from the show?
Hoban: It seems like people are taking away the thing that we said from the beginning, which is that these people who became victims lived full, complicated, rich, hard, fun, joyful, dark, light lives. The reaction from audiences is that people are really appreciating that, which is, I think, what all of us hoped that people would take away.
Garba: For me, I just say I hope people have more empathy. At the end of the day, we all basically want the same things in life. Find love, be healthy, pursue the thing we want to pursue, find a community. And I think we have kind of reverted backwards. Being mean and pushing people down is almost being celebrated. I just hope [our show] helps people have a little bit more empathy. And the only way society can move forward is if we all take care of each other.
Locklear: I have to say that I’ve never worked on a show and had so many people respond the way that they have. I think it is speaking to what Ahmadu and Ashley Michel are both saying, which is, I think people need this. And this show is giving them an unexpected place to go for that empathy. I hope people continue to enjoy it, and continue to tell people about the show because you could go in thinking it’s one thing and then come out completely blown away.
Rea: I’m really happy that people are seeing and appreciating that queer people are not a monolith and that we deserve multiple shades of our life on screen. I am so grateful and blessed to be in a room with all these amazing writers here who made me feel welcomed and created a space where I can open up and be vulnerable. And I feel like we really accomplished all that. And I feel like you guys are my family. And I feel like everybody that’s watching is understanding and feeling that same feeling that we all went through in the room together.
White: For the first time in my career, I’ve had the bizarrely wonderful experience of reading reviews and being like, yes, that’s exactly what we were trying to do. Yes. You understood. That has yet to happen. This is the first time. It’s just quite a nice feeling. I like it. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen again, but for the first time, it feels like something that we set out to do has been executed to the level where it has elicited the exact response we were hoping for.
Levinson: Patrick, do you have any parting words or are you committed to total silence?
[Laughter]
Patrick Macmanus: I will go back to the beginning of the conversation. One of the reasons that we were so on point was because GLAAD helped keep us on point. We would not have been able to do what we did without you. That’s part one. Part two is as with every show that I’ve done, I’ve been able to be in the orbit of most of these writers. But I could not do anything that I’ve done without them. And so I will always remain grateful to them for laying their talents and their blood on the table for us every single time. Most especially this. This has been genuinely the greatest thing I’ve ever worked on, and I doubt I’m going to be able to do it again.
Levinson: Thank you. Congratulations to all of you, and thank you for your collaboration on this, and it was really lovely to chat with all of you.