Gay&Night Mei 2016

Interview / Tituss Burgess
On Friday April 15th, Netix
premiered the second season of
their hit show Unbreakable Kimmy
Schmidt. We got the chance to
talk to actor Tituss Burgess, who
plays Titus Andromedon on the
show, about wine, pride and gay
stereotypes.
First of all; how has the sale of your
own brand of Pinot Noir been going?
‘It’s going great! People are responding really, really
well, so I’m quite pleased. There’s a company called
A Fine Wine Agency, and they had already launched
another line of rosé for a social media star. So we
thought that would be a perfect pairing and so we
went with them. They did a lot of the legwork, but it
was my idea.’
What kind of response have you been
getting from viewers?
‘It’s been great! I’ve had people chase me halfway
down the street, just to tell me how much they love
the show, and how much joy they nd in watching all
of us together. I should knock on wood, but I haven’t
gotten a bad response yet.’
Some people called your character Titus Andromedon
‘a gay stereotype’, which show writer Tina Fey has
defended. How do you feel about that?
‘I don’t think there’s anything stereotypical about
Titus. I don’t know what the LGBT community is like
in the Netherlands and Belgium, but the likes of Titus
are everywhere over here in New York City. So I’m
not sure what they want? We don’t draw attention
to straight people, and their “types” – like us,
they’re quite varied! I think it is because when we’re
presented with people we don’t normally see, we tend
to pay closer attention to them, without giving them
a lot of breathing room. We don’t allow more people
like them to come in, without compartmentalizing
them.’
Is that something that concerns you at all, how the gay
community sees your character and whether you’re
representing them ‘correctly’?
‘I really don’t care how people see the character. I
approach the character as humanly as possible, and
I say what my bosses tell me to say, as long as they’re
putting me in real life situations. If people are unable
to look past his sexuality, or his more amboyant
qualities, and pay attention to the actual storylines,
they probably don’t get the show as a whole. As
a result I don’t offer up much attention to their
response.’
In the new season of the show Titus gets a love
interest. Without spoiling too much, can you tell us
what that will be like for him?
‘He falls in love with this construction worker,
who we see in season one. It’s an unlikely coupling.
It brings out some extraordinary and unusual
emotional traits in Titus, and forces him to
reexamine how he treats people. It’s really lovely to
watch him explore some different parts of his person,
rather than his normal self-serving, self-centered
ways.’
You have a background in musical theater, you’re also
a singer/songwriter, and of course you’re on Netix.
Do you prefer one over the other? And do you think
it’s difficult to shift from one medium to another?
‘I think perhaps it might be a question of how
long you’ve been out of practice with one or the
other. Right now, I’m very much enjoying doing
television. I don’t know if I would say I prefer it, but
at the moment I certainly respond to it on a more
immediate level than I do to theater.’
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