{"id":113886,"date":"2022-07-24T12:38:04","date_gmt":"2022-07-24T17:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=113886"},"modified":"2022-07-25T13:02:43","modified_gmt":"2022-07-25T18:02:43","slug":"60-seconds-with-actor-gordon-thomson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=113886","title":{"rendered":"60 Seconds with Actor Gordon Thomson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1545664804358300\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/script><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block; text-align: center;\" data-ad-layout=\"in-article\" data-ad-format=\"fluid\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1545664804358300\" data-ad-slot=\"8616314829\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=113886\" rel=\"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=113886\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-113887 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Gordon-Thomson-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Gordon-Thomson-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Gordon-Thomson.jpg 730w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Exclusive Interview by Karen Beishuizen<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We all know Gordon as Adam Carrington in the long running show Dynasty and as Mason Capwell in Santa Barbara. Currently he is doing a cabaret act with fellow Dynasty actors John James and Jack Coleman called &#8220;Cocktails With The Carringtons &#8211; A Dynasty Party!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>KB: You are born in Canada. Did you always wanted to be an actor?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>I first won a part in &#8220;A Midsummer Night&#8217;s Dream&#8221; at McGill University when I was 18, and that was it; I knew what I was going to be for the rest of my life. It was an incredibly lucky occurrence for me &#8211; it left me doubt-free!<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>KB: You are best known as Adam Carrington in Dynasty which you played from 1982 till the end. How did you get this part?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>A.B.C. Television then had a Talent Development department and somehow (I truly do not know how) I became a part of it. This led to various meetings and interviews with different executives, and, finally, to a screen-test with Joan Collins. This went well and I got the job!<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>KB: When you play a not so nice character for such a long time, what do you do to keep the character interesting?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was very lucky with Adam: To begin with, I believe one writer was assigned to this character &#8211; I don&#8217;t know who this writer was but he\/she was a talented person and got Adam off to a very intriguing start. After this, he was in the hands of the &#8220;Dynasty&#8221; writing team. I never found him boring. And I suspect no one else did either!<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>KB: After Dynasty you starred in Santa Barbara and became the 3rd actor to play Mason Capwell. Was this a difficult task knowing you already had 2 actors before you who played the part?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>I had never watched &#8220;Santa Barbara,&#8221; and I had no preconception of the role of Mason. I have never met Lane Davies, Mason #1, who won an Emmy Award for his performance and who&#8217;s reputation was\/is terrific. I knew Terry Lester slightly and never saw his Mason. I was thrown into the role and the show very quickly &#8211; daytime drama is an incredibly fast operation &#8211; and just went to work. I was also in my prime when I played Mason, so the workload of 35 pages per day, five days a week, 50 weeks per year was a schedule I relished. I have never worked so hard in my career. I was also blessed with the best writing I have ever dealt with on camera. Again, great luck!<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>KB: In 2017, at the age of 72 you came out as gay. Congratulations! Why did you wait this long?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>In fact, I did not &#8220;come out.&#8221; I was outed, a very different experience. Along with John James and Pamela Bellwood, I was doing some promotional work to introduce the boxed set of &#8220;Dynasty&#8221; and the first words out of the interviewer&#8217;s mouth were &#8220;Well, Gordon, as one gay man to another,\u201d and I had one of those lightning-fast chats one sometimes has with oneself. I chose to simply continue the conversation. However, I was and remain angry at this ambush: I was robbed of my autonomy, which very few of us would ever agree to. In fact, the climate in which this happened was a far cry from the social climate in which I had spent my entire life.<\/p>\n<p>There was very little reaction of which I was aware, which doesn&#8217;t mean much since I have literally no presence or even interest in social media. You probably have seen more than I ever have, so I leave it to you to explore the reaction further, if you wish! To resume about the social climate in which I grew up: a bit of history on homophobia, Being gay was a crime in Canada until 1968; it was a mental illness in the U.S. until 1973; it was also a condition that was regarded with visceral and ubiquitous opprobrium and loathing. It still is in many parts of this country and globally. As I approached puberty, I of course heard all the epithets applied to gays and I gradually understood that all those ugly words and those ugly voices were talking about me.<\/p>\n<p>The shame was like a menacing thundercloud from which I have only recently escaped. Self-esteem was non-existent for me for decades. If you couple this with my job, and take into account my DNA, which is responsible for how I look, work options were\/are limited, I had to keep my sexuality to myself in order to work. During the &#8217;80&#8217;s, the era of &#8220;Dynasty,&#8221; the Aids crisis began and coming out would have been professional suicide, which I was unwilling to commit. I take the attitude of Richard Chamberlain towards coming out. I have never met him, but I agree with what I have read about him. Look him up if you are curious. He is less verbose than I and very clear about the journey he took. Thank you for your congratulations, but I really don&#8217;t deserve them. That I am out and pretty happy about it is a result of time and growth.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>KB: If you were to play the lead in a movie and you could pick the director and 3 co-stars: Who would you pick and why?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The director would be Sam Mendes. My co-stars would be Judy Davis and Saoirse Ronan. The script would need to be absolutely superb, but since I don&#8217;t pay enough attention to current writers, I would need to rely on the people above! (I mean Mendes, Davis, and Ronan, not heaven&#8217;s inhabitants!)<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>KB: What are you doing at the moment? Any new movies, series?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Right now, I am involved in a cabaret act with John James and Jack Coleman called &#8220;Cocktails With The Carringtons &#8211; A Dynasty Party!&#8221;. It consists of our memories of the show and a couple of wonderful new songs written by Jack (lyrics) and Nick Marzock (music) and so far, the response has been gratifying! There is a website under the title, so please have a look! As far as work on camera goes, I have been idle &#8211; a few self-tapes now and then, but currently nada. But I live in hope! An actor never truly retires!<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Check out the cabaret website:<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cocktailswiththecarringtons.com\/\"> HERE<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive Interview by Karen Beishuizen We all know Gordon as Adam Carrington in the long running show Dynasty and as Mason Capwell in Santa Barbara. Currently he is doing a cabaret act with fellow Dynasty actors John James and Jack Coleman called &#8220;Cocktails With The Carringtons &#8211; A Dynasty Party!&#8221; KB: You are born in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28132,17984],"tags":[29329],"class_list":["post-113886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns-by-karen-beishuizen","category-entertainment-news","tag-60-seconds-with-actor-gordon-thomson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113886"}],"version-history":[{"count":-2,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/113887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}