It’s safe to assume Billy Crystal won’t be making a film called When Harry Met Harry. The actor got into some hot water and had people scratching their heads in confusion after he made a passing comment about gay sex scenes on television. “Sometimes I think: ‘Ah that’s too much for me’,” Crystal said to the Television Critics Association in Pasadena this weekend. “Sometimes, it’s just pushing it a little too far for my taste and I’m not going to reveal to you which ones they are. I hope people don’t abuse it and shove it in our face to the point where it feels like an every-day kind of thing.”
While Crystal is uncomfortable with some – unspecified – simulated gay love scenes, he also told the audience how pleased he was at the groundbreaking work he did all those years ago on Soap, portraying Jodie Dallas, one of network TV’s first-ever gay characters. “It was very difficult at the time. Jodie was really the first recurring [gay] character on network television and it was a different time, it was 1977. So, yeah, it was awkward. It was tough. I did it in front of a live audience and there were times when I would say to Bob [Seagren], ‘I love you,’ and the audience would laugh nervously. I wanted to stop the taping and go, ‘What is your problem?’” Social media, however, has a problem with Crystal’s comments. One tweet read “Hey @BillyCrystal…I hope your shitty new show isn’t ‘shoved in our face like an everyday thing’ you ignorant homophobe.” Crystal’s new show is The Comedians on FX.
