Cheyenne Jackson: The Entertainer

With a plum new role on Glee and a repeat gig on 30 Rock, Cheyenne Jackson puts to rest the old Hollywood axiom that being gay doesn't pay.

By Aaron Hicklin

Fast-forward past the small-town childhood, and the stubborn, insistent facts of an austere upbringing -- an outhouse, no running water (“I promised my mom I would quit talking about it.”). Skip the reproving sign atop the TV set -- If Jesus lived here would you be watching this? -- and the ban on unwholesome music. Start, instead, in the Gulf of Mexico with the bang of an epiphany -- every good story needs one, and Cheyenne Jackson’s is a peach.

It is July 1993. Along with his fellow teen missionaries, the young Jackson is handing out New Testaments, bumper stickers, and smiles. The bumper stickers read diga no a la pornografía (say no to pornography), and the trick is to catch drivers as they pause at the stoplight. “It was so bizarre and misguided,” says Jackson. “People were shamed into letting us put them on their car, but then the light would turn green and -- you know, bumper stickers! You have to do it clean and smoothly.” He mimics the act of smoothing out the wrinkles as cars lurch forward, the smiling missionaries staggering in their wake. It’s a funny image; the kind of thing Tina Fey might crib as back story for Kenneth the Page, the doltish office drudge on 30 Rock, in which Jackson has a recurring role. But it’s not a punch line on NBC, and the memory stirs complicated emotions for the teller. Jackson’s instinct is to charm and entertain, but the easy grace he projects is also a smoke screen. There are things still being worked out, processed. “This is gonna get deep,” he warns. “I don’t know if I want to say this.” He swallows, composes himself, and summons the memory.

It is July 12, and the missionaries are at the beach to celebrate Jackson’s 18th birthday. There is a cake, dyed blue. There is Jackson’s girlfriend, Willow (“We always said we were gonna name our kid Shiloh. Like, combine our names.”). The boys and girls are singing Jesus songs, playing guitar, weeping tears of gratitude and joy, but Jackson is not among them. He is out in the ocean, treading water, gazing back on the scene.

“I never felt further away from who I really am,” he says. “I’m ready to go out in the world and be who I’m supposed to be, but I am so conflicted because the church and everything in that world is telling me that who I am is wrong, just wrong. And I know I’m a good person, I know that I treat people with kindness and that I try to make the world a better place. How can who I am be wrong? And in that moment I just know that something has to change. I have to acknowledge it. I’ve never said it out loud, like ‘I’m gay.’ I go pretty far down underwater, not trying to hurt myself, or anything, but it’s the sense that I want to sink. And I look up and I can see the sun above the water, and it’s almost as if I feel something reach in and pull me up. And when I surface I am totally different. I’ve made a decision. And I look at the kids, and for once I don’t feel disdain or wish I could feel what they are feeling. I don’t wish that I could have real tears when I close my eyes to pray. I feel like this is the first day.”


Jackson turned 35 this summer, celebrating with a small birthday party at Paris Commune, a restaurant in New York City’s West Village. It was a typically low-key affair. The actor Alan Cumming came by with his partner. Ricki Lake stopped in for a quick toast. Jackson ordered the halibut and a gin and tonic. It was a busy time for the actor. He’d just filmed an episode for the eighth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm and was due to start filming a movie, The Green, starring opposite Julia Ormond, in which Jackson plays the partner of a drama teacher (Jason Butler Harner) caught up in a sexual harassment case. Although a project with HBO had recently fallen through, the actor had just been told that Ryan Murphy had written him into the third season of Glee, as the new coach of Vocal Adrenaline, and his mood was buoyant. In the eight years since he moved to New York City, he’s built an enviable résumé of successful Broadway roles, including Chad in All Shook Up and Sonny in the Tony-nominated pop opera Xanadu, as well as his role in 30 Rock, but he wears his fame lightly, never playing the diva or taking his success for granted. It’s a quality that sets him apart from many of his peers. “He’s just so low-key and undemanding and unpretentious with his approach and his delivery -- there are no boundaries, no rules, which is unique in that business,” says the designer Kenneth Cole who knows Jackson through his work for amfAR, the AIDS research foundation of which Cole is chairman. For David Mixner, a long time gay activist and fundraiser, Jackson is “a man who not only has heart but gives it to this community unconditionally.”


A few months after that birthday dinner, Jackson and his partner of more than 10 years, Monte Lapka, walked into New York’s City Hall and registered as domestic partners. “We wanted to get as married as we could,” says Jackson. “I think we were filling in some forms for wills or insurance, and I just thought, Let’s just make this as legal as we can. It was with a bunch of Russian mail order brides, literally. And it was hilarious and it was romantic, just he and me, our little secret.” Although Lapka, a trained physicist, is apparently ambivalent about marriage proper, his status on Jackson’s Wikipedia page is already listed as “spouse.” The boy of 18 who had never said “I’m gay” has come a long way.