“The Exorcist” executive producer Jeremy Slater had some harsh remarks for fans offended by a gay kiss scene in a recent episode.
In an interview with Sci-Fi Bulletin, Slater says he’s “glad” if people were offended by the kiss between Father Marcus Keane (Ben Daniels) and Peter Morrow (Christopher Cousins).
“I saw a couple of homophobes on Twitter and my response is, ‘Good, fu*k you. I’m glad you didn’t like it, I’m glad it ruined the show for you. You shouldn’t have good things in your life,’” Slater says. “If a homophobe can’t watch the show any more because one of the characters is gay, then I’m glad something good has come out of it. This is 2017 and we still have people throwing temper tantrums online because they don’t want to see gay characters. I think it’s the last gasp of a certain breed of dinosaur that’s on the way out, and let them kick and scream as they go.”
Slater continued on that the series has hinted at Marcus’ sexuality since the first season but the decision was made to directly address his bisexuality.
“We’ve said from the beginning that Marcus is a bisexual character, which is pretty rare on television in general and certainly on network television, where everyone has binary definitions of gay or straight,” Slater adds. “We had little moments of flirting, a little flirty glance in a bar, to clue the audience that this thing that you think you’re seeing is actually there but I knew coming back to season 2 that it was very important and we had to work this into the plot in a natural way and do justice to it. We didn’t want to be coy and just dance around his sexuality for another season.”
“The Exorcist” airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on Fox.
