By: Chris Azzopardi
Some people had a hard time sitting through The A-List: New York, Logo’s tawdry teledoc about a gay gaggle that got eye-roll reactions from viewers who couldn’t completely look away. Imagine starring in it.
Reichen Lehmkuhl, who became the show’s punching bag for nasty names, looks back with regret that you didn’t see him like you should have. But he’s learned to get on with his life and focus his attention on the future – one that includes a film based on his first book (a follow-up to 2006’s Here’s What We’ll Say: Growing Up, Coming Out, and the U.S. Air Force is in the works) and exploring other avenues of his bottomless ambition as a political activist, model, musician and jeweler (seriously: he has his own line).
In a recent chat with Lehmkuhl, the 37-year-old got personal about his hurt feelings, how the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” affected him, his book-turned-movie, and his take on ex-boyfriend Lance Bass seemingly copying his career.
Chris Azzopardi: A:You were called lots of nasty names for your behavior on The A-List: New York. How do you feel about the way Logo cast you?
Reichen Lehmkuhl: It hurts. If it didn’t hurt, I think there’d be something wrong with me. I see myself differently. Clearly when I look at my life I see myself being raised in a trailer park and breaking into a successful military career, serving my country and graduating from the Air Force Academy.
After getting out and writing a book that sticks up for our entire community and cries out for help from everyone to get rid of a policy that’s going to help a lot of other anti-gay policies fall, to see anyone in the community turn around and call me a douche bag, it just makes me say, “Wow.” I watch A-List with different eyes, I’m sure. I guess if I were watching the show from those people’s eyes, maybe I would think I was a douche bag, too.
CA: How is it balancing serious stances on issues like DADT and then doing a reality show like A-List?
RL: (Laughs) It’s really hard, because with a show like A-List the cameras are on us for five months – 3,600 hours over the summer just of me – and you probably saw, over 10 episodes, maybe three hours. Imagine what they can do.
I tell people, “Don’t talk to me about editing until you’ve done a reality TV show, because you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Out of 3,600 hours, you take three hours of that and you make a person whatever you want them to be. …We signed up for this and we understand what they’re going to do. I wish I could just tell people, “That’s not the way it is.” But you look even more stupid sticking up for yourself, so I’ve learned to just let it go.
CA: You said you’re surprised by some of the reactions, but you also said you knew what you were getting into. Do you have regrets about doing the show? Would you do a second season?
RL: Umm… I don’t know. They haven’t even said yet if there will be a second season, so we haven’t really thought about it yet. I think that there are definitely some regrets. There are moments when I think, “Wow, we shouldn’t have even given them that.” A show can make you look like you’re hitting on someone in a club, but the editing doesn’t let you see that it’s your friend of 13 years. (Laughs) Suddenly, you’re hitting on someone in the club because you’re having a conversation and saying it’s too bad someone’s leaving the next day. That’s terrible, and it’s hard.
Even doing my song (“Up to the Sky,” a DADT protest tune), the show showed the one moment where I really screwed up, and anyone who’s a singer screws up. They took that and ran it over and over and over, and it ruined any credibility that I had to sing or to have a song or to try to do something good. You see the tragic part, and that’s it.
Had I known it was going to be so negative, I wouldn’t have done any of that on camera. I would’ve kept it as a very private part of my life and just released a song on my own, because now a lot of people won’t even download the song. They’re judging it based on what they saw on the TV show.
CA: Would you like to continue to pursue music?
RL: Um, yeah. I think I’d love to record more songs. I play the guitar all the time. I’ve been playing the guitar since I was 7, but the show makes it look like I am 7. (Laughs) If I did record more songs, I would never ever do it on the show. It was a humiliating experience for me when I set out for it to be really great project from the heart and to make a difference.
CA: As someone personally affected by “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” how did you feel when you heard it was repealed?
RL: There are no words to describe how I felt. It was 3:30 on the East Coast on Dec. 18, and I’ll never forget it: I had a few friends over here; we were watching C-SPAN like it was the Super Bowl.
The verdict really lit a new fire under me for the integration of LGBTQ people in the military, because now we have ground to stand on to get this done, and I feel like it’s just the beginning of integration. Now it’s really up to our community to really watch like hawks these people who are integrating the military and to make sure they do it correctly; if they do it too slowly, if they do it right and if they don’t enforce it the way it should be enforced, we need to watch for that.
CA: If this repeal had taken place while you were serving in the military, how do you think it would’ve affected you?
There’s an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 LGBT troops serving right now, and that’s just people who’ve admitted it on survey forms. If all those people came out, it would send really big waves through the squadrons and it would just normalize everything.
CA: Regarding Obama, you’ve said he’s failed you. Does the repeal of DADT restore your faith in him?
RL: No, because he didn’t do anything to make it happen. And the thing is, when President Obama had his justice department appeal the decision of the court ruling to end the ban, which he was under no obligation to do, he risked having this policy maybe another two years, maybe another six years if we didn’t get it passed just now.
… So yeah, I still have no faith in him, because he brought us to that point. I hear all these excuses being made for him, but I’m not going to apologize for him because I’m a Democrat.
CA: Your book’s being turned into a film, and names like Chace Crawford and Taylor RL: Lautner are allegedly being considered for the lead. Who would you want to play you?
RL: You know what, it’s not my call. I want whomever the casting director says should play me. Those are names that were on the shortlist and that are on a list, and there are a lot of other great names –
CA: Whoever plays you, it must just be cool to have a movie made about your life.
RL: I don’t even think about it being made about my life. The main character is not named Reichen, it’s not like that. It’s a story based on my life, and the lead of the movie is going to represent what happened to every gay cadet that was in the Air Force Academy.
CA: I’m wondering how you feel about certain people also making movies about their lives. And, you know, taking over a role that was once yours in a play called My Big Gay Italian Wedding.
RL: (Coyly laughing) Um. You know, I don’t even care. I just don’t care. I hear chatter, and I wish Lance very well.
CA: Will you see his movie when it comes out?
RL: (Laughs) Maybe if I’m invited I’ll go see it. I mean, I’m not against it. I have no ill will toward him.
CA: But didn’t you at one point?
RL: I think when people break up they break up for a reason. Usually those reasons are confined to personal space, and we were in a more public situation – so things got out and made it look like more than it was. Our relationship was a couple of months, and it was so long ago. A-Listmade it look like we just dated; it’s ridiculous. That’s ancient history.
