Mehcad Brooks sat down with HuffPost Live's Marc Lamont Hill on Thursday. It's a good interview. The star of USA's Necessary Roughness is spot-on with his critique of "diversity" and casting decisions in Hollywood. "I want today's kids to say, 'Oh, I can be a superhero!'" says Brooks. "Superman is from Krypton but he has to look like Mitt Romney's son."
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Necessary Roughness follows the players of a fictional football team. Brooks stars as the flamboyant wide receiver Terrence "TK" King—fighting an addiction to pain killers and having trouble coping with his quarterback's decision to come out as gay.
Brooks shares his thoughts on homophobia in professional sports in an interview with Andrew Davis at the Windy City Times. Brooks believes that an openly gay player in the big four—football, baseball, basketball and hockey—is "going to happen" soon.
As this country evolves, we become more liberal. ... We're going to see a few things we haven't seen before. We have a Black president who was re-elected to a second term. So I think a watershed moment in sports is going to happen—if not this year, then next. I happen to know quite a few NFL players, and they are pretty open in the locker room about the guys who are gay. They're out to their teammates, but not publicly.
I think that stigma is going away. Let me put it this way, man: It 10 times worse to be homophobic than gay, it's 10 times worse to be racist than a minority, it's 10 times worse to be sexist than it is to be a woman. Eventually, those of us who are living our truth have to be brave and speak up, and the people who would try to diminish that need to be ostracized. It's not OK to be homophobic, racist or sexist. We're past that. You want to live like that? Go somewhere else.
The quarterback's decision to come out of the closet becomes the second season's two-episode finale. After Elton's Jim Halterman interviews Travis Smith, the actor who plays the gay footballer, as well as series creators Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro.
A footnote to the discussion: You may recall that I interviewed former NFL player Wade Davis and former basketball players DeMarco Majors and Will Sheridan on "Coming Out in the Locker Room" for the new-ish anthology For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Still Not Enough. On January 30, the anthology won the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award.
Video of the interview is at the source. (won't embed)
Source
Necessary Roughness follows the players of a fictional football team. Brooks stars as the flamboyant wide receiver Terrence "TK" King—fighting an addiction to pain killers and having trouble coping with his quarterback's decision to come out as gay.
Brooks shares his thoughts on homophobia in professional sports in an interview with Andrew Davis at the Windy City Times. Brooks believes that an openly gay player in the big four—football, baseball, basketball and hockey—is "going to happen" soon.
As this country evolves, we become more liberal. ... We're going to see a few things we haven't seen before. We have a Black president who was re-elected to a second term. So I think a watershed moment in sports is going to happen—if not this year, then next. I happen to know quite a few NFL players, and they are pretty open in the locker room about the guys who are gay. They're out to their teammates, but not publicly.
I think that stigma is going away. Let me put it this way, man: It 10 times worse to be homophobic than gay, it's 10 times worse to be racist than a minority, it's 10 times worse to be sexist than it is to be a woman. Eventually, those of us who are living our truth have to be brave and speak up, and the people who would try to diminish that need to be ostracized. It's not OK to be homophobic, racist or sexist. We're past that. You want to live like that? Go somewhere else.
The quarterback's decision to come out of the closet becomes the second season's two-episode finale. After Elton's Jim Halterman interviews Travis Smith, the actor who plays the gay footballer, as well as series creators Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro.
A footnote to the discussion: You may recall that I interviewed former NFL player Wade Davis and former basketball players DeMarco Majors and Will Sheridan on "Coming Out in the Locker Room" for the new-ish anthology For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Still Not Enough. On January 30, the anthology won the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award.
Video of the interview is at the source. (won't embed)
Source