The Exorcist showrunner Jeremy Slater has responded to viewers who were offended, upset, in their feelings and otherwise triggered by a kiss between two male characters: ex-priest Marcus Keane (Ben Daniels) and Peter Morrow (Christopher Cousins).
In a season 2 episode, Keane shares a kiss with Peter, a local on a remote island plagued with demonic activity. Fox’s horror drama, a sequel to 1973’s seminal horror classic, had hinted at Keane’s sexuality back in season 1.
In an interview with Sci-Fi Bulletin, Slater discussed the backlash, which he characterized as minimal. For those who did complain, he had some strong words:
“I saw a couple of homophobes on Twitter and my response is, ’Good, fuck you. I’m glad you didn’t like it, I’m glad it ruined the show for you. You shouldn’t have good things in your life.'”
“If a homophobe can’t watch the show anymore because one of the characters is gay, then I’m glad something good has come out of it,” Slater added. “This is 2017 and we still have people throwing temper tantrums online because they don’t want to see gay characters. I think it’s the last gasp of a certain breed of dinosaur that’s on the way out, and let them kick and scream as they go.”
Slater pointed out that Keane has been conceived as a bisexual character from the beginning:
“We’ve said from the beginning that Marcus is a bisexual character, which is pretty rare on television in general and certainly on network television, where everyone has binary definitions of gay or straight. Getting to explore all facets of his sexuality and character is really something that we didn’t get a chance to do in season 1, not because we didn’t want to, but because we didn’t have the time to do it….
“We had little moments of flirting, a little flirty glance in a bar, to clue the audience that this thing that you think you’re seeing is actually there but I knew coming back to season 2 that it was very important and we had to work this into the plot in a natural way and do justice to it. We didn’t want to be coy and just dance around his sexuality for another season.”
According to Slater, his favorite moment of season 2 has been the fans’ reaction to Marcus’ kiss on Twitter. “We had to fight very hard to get it in the show, to figure out a narrative way where it didn’t feel like we were just dropping Marcus out of the larger storyline, and to do it in a way that didn’t feel exploitative or cheesy and did justice to the character. Seeing how people responded to that made me so happy,” he said.
The Exorcist airs Fridays at 10 p.m. EST on Fox. Do you care whether or not a character shares a same-sex kiss? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
