Hollyoaks star: ‘Camp characters deserve to be represented’
By Ben Kelly
Actor Ross Adams, who plays Scott in Hollyoaks, has defended camp characters on TV, saying they have become lost among more ‘straight-acting’ gay characters.
Speaking to Digital Spy, Adams admits Scott was a fairly unlikeable character when he first hit the screens a year ago.
“I think it’s always really difficult for a new character coming into the show,” he says. “When I first joined, I received a lot of hate. The reaction on Twitter was fairly negative and that was really hard for me to read.”
Asked about the specific criticisms received by ‘out and proud’ gay characters like his, and Coronation Street‘s Sean Tully (played by Antony Cotton), Adams maintains that it is important to have a variety of gay characters portrayed on screen.
“If you’re playing someone who is larger than life and flamboyant, that can polarise opinion,” he says.
“Characters like Scott and Sean Tully are of a similar ilk because they are more camp, but I do think that it’s important for those types of gay characters to be represented. Recently we’ve had an awful lot of gay characters in soaps who are very ‘straight-acting’, if you like. Amongst all that, the camper gay characters got lost a little bit.”
He adds: “Hollyoaks is probably the most LGBT-friendly show anyway. But I think it’s good that here we have gay characters who are more straight-acting like John Paul and Ste, but then we also have a character like Scott who is camp and silly.
“Just as there are different types of straight people, there are different types of gay people as well.”
Hollyoaks airs weekdays at 6.30pm on Channel 4.
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