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Gay Icon Danny Roberts Returns To TV, Still Sexy As Hell
Danny Roberts is still recognized as one of the most popular Reality TV characters ever.
When he moved to Seattle ten years ago, he was running from his own fame. Or at least that’s what it seemed like.
He was fresh from his Real World: New Orleans days and riding high on an astonishing popularity. Never had America seen such a charismatic openly gay man on a television series—and that charisma extended well beyond the scope of the show.
Danny, who was originally from a small conservative Georgia town, had an appeal that was remarkably broad: men, women, gays, straights, poodles, pirates, and plates of pasta—everyone fell in love with Danny. (That deep Southern drawl! Those smoldering bed-room eyes!)
Even Neil Patrick Harris, the King of Gay himself, confessed in the August 24, 2008 issue of Out Magazine that, “The first face that empowered me was Danny Roberts from The Real World…He represented a way that I could behave and stand tall comfortably.”
Banking on his universal gay goodness, The WB Television Network talked Danny into appearing on a few episodes of Dawson’s Creek (along, of course, with giant-headed James Vanderbeek and a doomed little alien princess known as, um, Katie Holmes).
Danny played “Jean-Jean”, a French-speaking boy toy at the beginning of Season 4. When that went well, the network offered Danny his very own show, something a million starry-eyed ingénues would give their starry-eyes for.
But Danny protested. He wasn’t an actor! They offered him a private acting coach, lessons, reassurances. He insisted that he didn’t want to BE an actor! They offered more money…
But, no.
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