Neil Patrick Harris is showing a side of himself we’ve never seen before.
In Darren Star and Jeffrey Richman’s new Netflix series Uncoupled, Harris plays Michael, a gay New York real estate agent who Colin (Tok Watkins) leaves 17 years ago.
As Michael navigates dating again, stories of love, heartbreak, middle age, and unexpected sexual encounters unfold.
Harris has been seen in various instances of undressing. In fact, the actor has his first on-camera gay sex scene in “Uncoupled” with “Sex and the City” alum Gilles Marini.
“We reached out in that first scene and then between the shots, he said, ‘Oh that’s right? Harris remembers. I said: What do they say? He adds, “I heard it’s better to kiss another man than a woman and I can see this now. What they’re saying is true. I sprained my knee and said, ‘Oh my God, thank you so much.'”
The cast also includes Tisha Campbell, who plays Michael’s friend and business partner, as well as Emerson Brooks, Brooks Ashmanskas, and Marcia Gay Harden. Legendary Tony Award winning Andre de Shields appears as Michael’s neighbor, Jack.
On this week’s edition of the “Just for Variety” podcast, I sat with Harris in the Netflix offices in New York City just two hours before he walked the red carpet at the show’s world premiere at the Paris Theatre.
These are some of the headlines:
in family life
Harris says he wasn’t looking for more work when he was offered “Uncoupled” because he’s trying to spend more time with his twins and husband David Burtka of 11 years, Harper and Gideon. Filming in New York helped seal the deal.
“I just want to be able to prioritize these next five or six years with them before they move on to college,” Harris says. “I know even before that they want more independence and don’t necessarily want to spend time with us. I didn’t want to go to Atlanta to shoot something for six weeks and then take a week off and then go to Toronto to shoot something, which I did.”
sex education
Darren Starr may have created “Sex and the City,” but Harris says he wasn’t as familiar with the hit HBO series as one might suppose.
“It’s the same way I don’t know the ‘Golden Girls,'” Harris admits. “It’s the same way I don’t know Barbra Streisand. Gay started with such “Into the Woods”, “Les Miserables” and musical theater. It didn’t really start with Judy Garland.”
The naked truth
Harris says he wasn’t too concerned about his nude scenes in “Uncoupled.”
“I actually feel more comfortable in my skin now than I did five years ago,” he says.
Oscar
Harris remembers stripping his underwear for a skit when he hosted the Academy Awards in 2015.
“It looks like I chose to do this, which I thought was funny at the time,” he says. “And then I realized this is the image people use when they talk about me as the Oscars host and I was wearing really nice suits. I had a really good wardrobe for that.”
Harris had to wear two pairs of tight clothes. With only one pair “with the spotlight shining right on it, I kind of saw through it.”
picture perfect
When it came time to find a picture of his private parts for Michael to post on the Grindr app, a picture of a prosthesis was considered.
I said, ‘Why don’t we just find a good picture on the Internet for someone? “I had to be somewhat humble about it,” Harris says, adding, ‘I had to be pretty humble about it. It was a rather unsafe make because you don’t want to pick out a huge dong as that’s like its weird meta joke. You don’t want to pick a small dong because that’s his own weird joke. [We needed] Something normal, average size. But in the scene after that the guy says it’s a nice penis. So it had to be nice. I don’t know. It was very strange for me to choose.”
true stories
During one scene, Michael contacts a dermatologist who suggests injecting his ass with Botox to make anal sex more comfortable.
“I laughed so hard when they were just telling me this story was going down the tube, as it were,” Harris says. “I said exactly what I said, ‘Is that a thing?’ “And apparently it is. I hope we don’t turn it into something bigger.”
For the record, Richman spoke about the issue at the premiere, and shared that most—if not all—hits were inspired by real-life experiences he talked about in the writers room.
Doctor’s note
Harris recently returned from filming the new season of “Doctor Who” in Wales. Showrunner Russell T Davis offered him a role after they worked together on a HBO Max limited series about the early days of the AIDS epidemic, It’s a Sin. “Sex Education” star Ncuti Gatwa will debut as the new incarnation of The Doctor.
“I’ve met him and interacted quite a bit with him and he’s glorious,” Harris says of Gatwa. “The first gay doctor, which would be cool, would be a sexologist.”
“Uncoupled” is now available on Netflix.
You can listen to the full interview with Harris above. You can also find “Just for Variety” wherever you download your favorite audio files.
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