Photo: George Pimentel/WireImage
Adamo Ruggierois reflecting on his iconic role as Marco Del Rossi onDegrassi: The Next Generation.
In anA.V. Club profile celebrating the teen drama’s 20th anniversarypublished on Thursday, the 35-year-old actor opened up about how playing the character — who struggled with his sexuality — had helped him personally come out.
“I was a closeted gay boy, and I found myself on the show, and my life went from zero to 100,” Ruggiero recalled. “I hadn’t really acted that much before. Suddenly, I was a character that was playing to all my deepest, darkest secrets, so there was a lot of negotiation of my coming out personally and a negotiation of my personally not being prepared to have those conversations because they were drawing to these pains in me.”
“But in a way, I was forced to have those conversations, publicly and globally,” he continued. “That balance was ping-pong, like, ‘Who am I? Am I ready to reveal? I know that this character, whether I like it or not, is going to reveal it for me.’ "
According to actress Lauren Collins, who played Marco’s best friend Paige Michalchuk on the series, Ruggiero spoke to her about his own sexuality after his character came out onscreen.
“I remember when Adamo came out to me, and it wasafterMarco came out,” she said. “I can’t imagine the struggle and the turmoil that he’d been going through having to act out what he was about to experience in his own life. I think that’s what made the performance so moving.”
While Ruggiero described his time playing Marco as an “incredible” experience, he said it also “left some things in me that have taken me some years to negotiate, and I’m still negotiating.”
courtesy Everett Collection
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“It was a coming-out experience that should not have been that public for me. However, there’s always a wonderful side,” he explained. “What Marco gave me is a community. In the promotion of the show, I connected with a queer world. He just busted open this door of a world that probably would have taken a lot longer to find.”
Though the show was known to cover a variety of tough subjects — including teen pregnancy, rape, abortion, and school shootings — Ruggiero believes that it fell short in exploring gay culture.
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“We missed opportunities to talk about gay sex, and queer sex and queer bodies,” he said. “Marco is really kind of desexualized, and I think that was something that maybe networks weren’t ready for at the time.”
Continued Ruggiero, “Once Marco came out, he always had a boyfriend. But in his relationships, there was nothing about the dynamics of gay sex and safe sex and the sexual culture as a young gay man.”
“We were all cast age-appropriate. We all looked super real. I was no heartthrob, and the show talked about these things that kids are so curious about,” he said, though he noted that there was “a campiness to the show.”
“It was just overdramatic. But there was a bit of this, like, Canadian camp that can only exist in parts of Canadian television,” he added.
source: people.com
