Ryan Phillippe went on the Tonight Show With Jay Leno. Leno - sort of out of the blue - started to mock the fact that Phillippe had played a gay character on a soap back in the 90s. Leno tried to get Phillippe to join in the mockery of his own work on the show, at one point asking Phillippe to turn to the camera and make a "gay look." Philippe refused to go along and, as I recall, after some back-and-forth, stated that he was proud of the work he did on OLTL. It took real courage to do that, since it risked getting blacklisted from the show.
I was 16 and a sophomore when this was airing. Being closeted myself id set my bedroom vcr to record one life to live everyday at 1pm. I was lucky because this storyline happened on summer break and I never would have been able to sneak and watch it otherwise. It was a huge deal to me back then. To mention I just had the biggest crush on him. I followed his career ever since. Thanks for being an early ally Ryan. I probably wouldn’t be here otherwise.
Hopefully Ryan reads some of these comments and sees how so many of us appreciate his courage to play a gay teen. It is people like Ryan who have given many of us the courage to be ourselves.
We can never measure the effect his performance had on the development of social norms, particularly regarding gay youth.. but we CAN know that the impact was exponential, and that we might not be where we are right now, if not for that performance. So thank you, Ryan Phillipe, for all the lives you potentially saved, and the difference you have made so far. ❤
I know me too! I can’t imagine how good it felt to relate to a character on tv. Made me so sad he had to hide his true self and write a stranger about his inner conflict.
1992 was a difficult time for gay teens. I was 16 and spent that summer seeing a me on tv. I needed that at the time. And of course AIDS deaths were raging in ‘92 as well. If we weren’t bashed would we get sick and die. I asked myself that a lot.
It was crazy that Ryan Phillipe didn't win an Emmy for his work on One Life To Live! But I resented that the show got rid of Billy so quickly and he wasn't a regular character - if he had been Vicki's son it would have been different. But wow! Ryan was AMAZING in the role!!!!
I never watched ONE LIFE TO LIVE. I was an AS THE WORLD TURNS watcher. Don't judge me, my grandmother got me hooked on that in 1978. It wasn't until 93 or 94 that they started having their gay teenage characters. And, it's all thanks to ONE LIFE TO LIVE bringing the character to the TV screen, and the performance of Ryan Phillipe, which from what I read was a brilliant, honest, and realistic portrayal. And the fact that they didn't have Billy as the typical gay stereotype. He just happened to be a regular guy who was gay. I do hope Ryan is proud of the important role he played in laying down the strong foundation for future characters to come.
I can’t judge, I was a PASSIONS and sometimes all my children fan on school summer vacations. And mother acted shocked when she found out I was gay lol
OLTL was my favorite soap back then (I actually watched it from the late 80s until its very last episode in 2012) and I obviously remember this storyline. When I saw I Know What You Did Last Summer, I was happy to see that "Billy" had made it to the big screen! No surprise though as I thought Ryan Phillippe was a very good actor. I also remember seeing him in interviews, and I recall being a little disappointed at the way he answered some questions as he seemed to try hard to distance himself from the role. All these decades later, seeing this gives me a better perspective on what was going on with him behind the scenes.
Thank you, Ryan Philippe, for such a courageous performance, especially given the background you came from! To this day, your portrayal of Billy is important & iconic. And yes, many thanks to Agnes Nixon for dealing with so many crucial issues on her shows.
Wow! I know that this is an old post but when Ryan began reading the letter I started tearing up. I believe Ryan is a good person. Maybe one day during the summer I will bump into him in Rehoboth or Dewey.
Wow. I never knew this about him. I knew he got his start on a soap opera, but not about the character he played. Good for him for being so empathetic and open.
When done right, soap opera is a most affective medium. Agnes Nixon, whose name you saw in the shot of the end credits of "ONE LIFE TO LIVE" knew this... It really gals me when someone like Andy Cohen beams about how impactful the Billy Douglas (Ryan Phillippe) storyline was, when in a recent network documentary he showed no respect for the soap genre.
Same about Cohen. And as if viewers needed to hear the perspective of (at the time) a very out male TV producer in his mid-20's living & working in NYC.
And to think so many Young Actors were Gay and kept it on the quiet. Thom Bierdz (Phillip Y & R), Ben Jorgensen (Ex Kevin Sheffield AMC, Ex Chris Hughes ATWT) who sadly killed himself. In The UK alot of musicians, were gay and some were even outed. Duncan James of The Man Band Blue, and Kavanaugh admitted he was Gay. Duncan was outed by the UK Press and worked on a very Gay Friendly Soap Opera called Hollyoaks.
Do commentators here think they would have faced backlash had they told their high school classmates in 1992 that their personal lives mattered? That was hardly the only way to make your classmates denigrate you. Suppose you had suggested to an English teacher, within earshot of at least one classmate, that you should be allowed to write a term paper about the complicated story arcs of One Life to Live. Suppose your attitude had been, forget Dickens’ Great Expectations and dissect One Life to Live. Reactions to that, including your English teacher’s reaction, would have been a lot worse than reactions to your saying you must be yourself, as if any human can “be” the sexual acts he or she performs. If you propose to write a term paper about One Life to Live, your English teacher will give you a bad grade for that semester and will not contribute to your college applications. It is weird that throughout the 1990s, the numbers of openly gay students on Ivy League campuses skyrocketed. It is weird because presumably they knew in 1992 that high school faculty did not consider a One Life to Live episode script to be an erudite legitimate stage play. They did not classify One Life to Live with the 1962 Broadway play A Man For All Seasons. When I was a high school student, you had to get an “A” on a term paper about A Man For All Seasons in order to be accepted by a college or university that was located far away from your parents’ home. Being accepted in social circles didn’t matter. When I was in high school, the future was all that mattered. If you used a VCR to record One Life to Live, the high school you attended was very different from the one I attended. Mr. Phillippe says on-camera he attended a Christian high school in Delaware. My school was not Christian, but it had something in common with a Christian school. That was that using a VCR every day was not a scholarly thing to do. Possibly, you could watch General Hospital without using a VCR, and nothing else. How could a 16-year-old One Life to Live fan pay for numerous videocassettes? If parents paid, they were ideal parents.
Oohh Ryan ur a real hero. It must have been difficult to get your first job as an actor on Mega soap opera and try to be a gay guy. I bet you had to pray a lot on your way to the bank and ask God if you should do the numerous talk shows. It must have been hard for you being so straight and all.
love the guy as an actor , but i see some news lately that he is pretty anti gay .. ( sorry i hate woke propaganda so i'm not saying homophobe ) but is he ? maybe it's uprising and education made him lately be less open to that and probably that a ton of gay producers wanted to have sex with him just for a role .. so i guess i kinda understands him a bit ...
We are the same age. I was 15 and had been out for 1.5 years in KY. My favorite show was The Young and the Restless, I maybe shouldn't have started watching it at 6 years old, but when it's your Mom's favorite show too it's almost impossible not to...lol The was such a ginormous AhHa moment for me. I would show all my friends. I'd open Teen Beat & finally see someone like me. It was a pivotal moment for me. I wasn't the only gay person my friends and family saw everyday. Finally in 1994 The Young & The Restless had it's first gay character. Ryan is an Icon in my book. I will never forget his impact on my life & many others. Groundbreaking! 💛🤍💜🖤
Ryan Phillippe went on the Tonight Show With Jay Leno. Leno - sort of out of the blue - started to mock the fact that Phillippe had played a gay character on a soap back in the 90s. Leno tried to get Phillippe to join in the mockery of his own work on the show, at one point asking Phillippe to turn to the camera and make a "gay look." Philippe refused to go along and, as I recall, after some back-and-forth, stated that he was proud of the work he did on OLTL. It took real courage to do that, since it risked getting blacklisted from the show.
SHAME ON JAY LENO.
Leno is a smug moron.
Jay Leno is trash. Just look how he treated Conan. Absolute garbage human being
Leno never changed, went on to mock Brokeback Mountain years later.
What a piece of garbage
The fact Ryan did this is so awesome. His portrayal of Billy was groundbreaking.
I was 16 and a sophomore when this was airing. Being closeted myself id set my bedroom vcr to record one life to live everyday at 1pm. I was lucky because this storyline happened on summer break and I never would have been able to sneak and watch it otherwise. It was a huge deal to me back then. To mention I just had the biggest crush on him. I followed his career ever since. Thanks for being an early ally Ryan. I probably wouldn’t be here otherwise.
Hopefully Ryan reads some of these comments and sees how so many of us appreciate his courage to play a gay teen. It is people like Ryan who have given many of us the courage to be ourselves.
Can we pause for a moment to realize HE STILL HAS THAT LETTER!
agreed!
That's phenomenal. I was 21 but it still hit me pretty strongly.
❤ This is a cool kind man.
It really is important to see other people like you , I swear the internet, helped me come out in highs-cool watching UA-cam
That's so cool. I hope that guy survived and thrived
We can never measure the effect his performance had on the development of social norms, particularly regarding gay youth.. but we CAN know that the impact was exponential, and that we might not be where we are right now, if not for that performance. So thank you, Ryan Phillipe, for all the lives you potentially saved, and the difference you have made so far. ❤
the letter made me cry 😭❤️
I know me too! I can’t imagine how good it felt to relate to a character on tv. Made me so sad he had to hide his true self and write a stranger about his inner conflict.
@@rachelann724 yes very true !
Didn't make me cry. Just my allergies kicking in 😉
It got me too!
1992 was a difficult time for gay teens. I was 16 and spent that summer seeing a me on tv. I needed that at the time. And of course AIDS deaths were raging in ‘92 as well. If we weren’t bashed would we get sick and die. I asked myself that a lot.
It was crazy that Ryan Phillipe didn't win an Emmy for his work on One Life To Live! But I resented that the show got rid of Billy so quickly and he wasn't a regular character - if he had been Vicki's son it would have been different. But wow! Ryan was AMAZING in the role!!!!
Oh you are right
Even the fact that he kept those letters just goes to show what a wonderful person he is.
I never watched ONE LIFE TO LIVE. I was an AS THE WORLD TURNS watcher. Don't judge me, my grandmother got me hooked on that in 1978. It wasn't until 93 or 94 that they started having their gay teenage characters. And, it's all thanks to ONE LIFE TO LIVE bringing the character to the TV screen, and the performance of Ryan Phillipe, which from what I read was a brilliant, honest, and realistic portrayal. And the fact that they didn't have Billy as the typical gay stereotype. He just happened to be a regular guy who was gay. I do hope Ryan is proud of the important role he played in laying down the strong foundation for future characters to come.
I can’t judge, I was a PASSIONS and sometimes all my children fan on school summer vacations. And mother acted shocked when she found out I was gay lol
I've always loved Ryan since I saw him on OLTL
Bravo 👏🏼 to Ryan Phillipe for being so brave and being a pioneer 🎉
He would go on to play so many roles, a few of them gay. He gained insight and empathy at a young age.
OLTL was my favorite soap back then (I actually watched it from the late 80s until its very last episode in 2012) and I obviously remember this storyline. When I saw I Know What You Did Last Summer, I was happy to see that "Billy" had made it to the big screen! No surprise though as I thought Ryan Phillippe was a very good actor. I also remember seeing him in interviews, and I recall being a little disappointed at the way he answered some questions as he seemed to try hard to distance himself from the role. All these decades later, seeing this gives me a better perspective on what was going on with him behind the scenes.
Thank you, Ryan Philippe, for such a courageous performance, especially given the background you came from! To this day, your portrayal of Billy is important & iconic. And yes, many thanks to Agnes Nixon for dealing with so many crucial issues on her shows.
If i lived in the 90s he wouldve been my gay awakening, he was GORGEOUS
Wow! I know that this is an old post but when Ryan began reading the letter I started tearing up. I believe Ryan is a good person. Maybe one day during the summer I will bump into him in Rehoboth or Dewey.
The fact that Ryan still had that letter many years later speaks volumes
Somebody's chopping onions.
Ryan also knows he was the awakening for lots of us gay men.
1:40 and it’s still the way to this day for some folks. I’m so glad I got out of Church.
OMG I LOVE YOU RYAN!!!! You are so young here. You have become better with age
Ryan is a great human being ❤!
This was awesome and news to me. Ryan has always had our back. What a mensch!
Groundbreaking performance. Especially for the early 1990s, Alas, Billy was written off the series in 1994.
He is a terrific actor, I want him to get more recognition
This was so powerful. I was the same age. It meant so much to me.
I never knew he was an ally like this. Love him.
Wow. I never knew this about him. I knew he got his start on a soap opera, but not about the character he played. Good for him for being so empathetic and open.
When done right, soap opera is a most affective medium. Agnes Nixon, whose name you saw in the shot of the end credits of "ONE LIFE TO LIVE" knew this... It really gals me when someone like Andy Cohen beams about how impactful the Billy Douglas (Ryan Phillippe) storyline was, when in a recent network documentary he showed no respect for the soap genre.
Same about Cohen. And as if viewers needed to hear the perspective of (at the time) a very out male TV producer in his mid-20's living & working in NYC.
Oh geez that Cohen guy had that stupid smile since his teens. 😅
His kids with Reece Witherspoon inherited his good looks!! His son Deacon looks just like him!
0:25 Of course...it's the "snow-queen"
The year i came out of the closet. This and the TV movie Doing Time on Maple Drive really helped me realize who I was.
Andy: Ryan Philuhpay
Newscaster: Ryan Filleepay
Me: Ryan Philupee
This is why representation is important
What is this documentary?
'Visible: out On Television'
Andy Cohen has got to be the most annoying self promoter oyt there
It’s the cocaine.
what is the title of this documentary?
Visible: out On Television (I googled it. It's on Apple TV).
But he was uncomfortable playing that lead role in 1998 movie 54 coz he has to make out with the other male actor 😅😂
Merci Ryan
And to think so many Young Actors were Gay and kept it on the quiet. Thom Bierdz (Phillip Y & R), Ben Jorgensen (Ex Kevin Sheffield AMC, Ex Chris Hughes ATWT) who sadly killed himself. In The UK alot of musicians, were gay and some were even outed. Duncan James of The Man Band Blue, and Kavanaugh admitted he was Gay. Duncan was outed by the UK Press and worked on a very Gay Friendly Soap Opera called Hollyoaks.
Soap operas tended to lead the way in tackling controversial issues.
He’s still such a snack. 🥵
Do commentators here think they would have faced backlash had they told their high school classmates in 1992 that their personal lives mattered? That was hardly the only way to make your classmates denigrate you. Suppose you had suggested to an English teacher, within earshot of at least one classmate, that you should be allowed to write a term paper about the complicated story arcs of One Life to Live. Suppose your attitude had been, forget Dickens’ Great Expectations and dissect One Life to Live. Reactions to that, including your English teacher’s reaction, would have been a lot worse than reactions to your saying you must be yourself, as if any human can “be” the sexual acts he or she performs. If you propose to write a term paper about One Life to Live, your English teacher will give you a bad grade for that semester and will not contribute to your college applications. It is weird that throughout the 1990s, the numbers of openly gay students on Ivy League campuses skyrocketed. It is weird because presumably they knew in 1992 that high school faculty did not consider a One Life to Live episode script to be an erudite legitimate stage play. They did not classify One Life to Live with the 1962 Broadway play A Man For All Seasons. When I was a high school student, you had to get an “A” on a term paper about A Man For All Seasons in order to be accepted by a college or university that was located far away from your parents’ home. Being accepted in social circles didn’t matter. When I was in high school, the future was all that mattered. If you used a VCR to record One Life to Live, the high school you attended was very different from the one I attended. Mr. Phillippe says on-camera he attended a Christian high school in Delaware. My school was not Christian, but it had something in common with a Christian school. That was that using a VCR every day was not a scholarly thing to do. Possibly, you could watch General Hospital without using a VCR, and nothing else. How could a 16-year-old One Life to Live fan pay for numerous videocassettes? If parents paid, they were ideal parents.
My crush of a life time from Cruel intensions 😊❤
He was so dam cute in his teenage years!!! ❤
was? bro is still smoking hot at almost 50.
He’s still cute, lol
I'm 26 and I'd definitely hit it with him 😂
@@Mugiwara2k he still is
Oohh Ryan ur a real hero. It must have been difficult to get your first job as an actor on Mega soap opera and try to be a gay guy. I bet you had to pray a lot on your way to the bank and ask God if you should do the numerous talk shows. It must have been hard for you being so straight and all.
😥🙏❤️
love the guy as an actor , but i see some news lately that he is pretty anti gay .. ( sorry i hate woke propaganda so i'm not saying homophobe ) but is he ? maybe it's uprising and education made him lately be less open to that and probably that a ton of gay producers wanted to have sex with him just for a role .. so i guess i kinda understands him a bit ...
wow
What a way to end it story or true life
Ryan Phillipe still does not age! 😮
I'm not cryinf you're crying
He's still fine and acts well...yet, no new movies?
love this but i feel like that letter was scripted
The word scripted means written. Yes, somebody hand-wrote they letter and mailed it to him all those years ago and it's sweet that he kept it.
@@thorr18BEM 😂😂 ok Word Police , I should have written “staged” but something tells me you knew that already hey 😂😂
The beginning of tearing the fabric of family and normalcy in our country.
i get it, your parents set you up for a tough lot in life when they named you steve, but you don’t need to take that out on others
@@emartin7421 You assume things that you do not know but it still doesn't change facts.
@@blackisback74 i’ll tell you what i know, there’s nothing wrong with being gay but there’s everything wrong with having a name like steve
@@emartin7421 Jersey how much you know because if you think there's nothing wrong with being gay then you obviously don't know much
@@blackisback74 you say that yet have provided zero legitimate reason why, and i’m 100% confident i could dispute any stupid point you would make
We are the same age. I was 15 and had been out for 1.5 years in KY. My favorite show was The Young and the Restless, I maybe shouldn't have started watching it at 6 years old, but when it's your Mom's favorite show too it's almost impossible not to...lol The was such a ginormous AhHa moment for me. I would show all my friends. I'd open Teen Beat & finally see someone like me. It was a pivotal moment for me. I wasn't the only gay person my friends and family saw everyday. Finally in 1994 The Young & The Restless had it's first gay character. Ryan is an Icon in my book. I will never forget his impact on my life & many others. Groundbreaking! 💛🤍💜🖤