'High School Musical' Character Was Gay, Confirms Trilogy's Director
The director of all three "High School Musical" movies, Kenny Ortega, has confirmed what fans knew all along: The character of Ryan Evans, played by Lucas Grabeel, was conceptualized as being gay.
The director's comments came during an interview with Variety, in which he says he felt that Disney was not ready for an openly gay character in 2006, the year the first film premiered on the Disney Channel.
As a result, Ortega said he chose to let the character's status as gay remain unspoken and assumed that the character would come out in college.
Ortega made the disclosure as he discussed the "queer aesthetic" of his popular movies, which include the early '90s hits "Newsies" and "Hocus Pocus."
The Mouse has grown up since then and proven willing to reflect the real world's diversity in its depictions of magical, fantasy-infused worlds. One recent Pixar short film, "Out," streaming now at Disney+, features a gay man faced with the prospect of coming out to his parents; less front and center were a pair of mallard dads on a recent episode of Disney's animated series "Duck Tales."
But the time, Ortega said, he didn't think Disney would like an openly gay character, "and Disney is the most progressive group of people I've ever worked with."
Ortega told Variety about coming out in the '60s as a young actor, and shared a story about how a corrupt law enforcement officer in South Carolina took revenge on him (and his bisexual character from the play "Hair") by framing him as a drug dealer. It was a charge that fell apart, Ortega said, when honest officials stepped up.
Ortega looked back fondly on "Hocus Pocus," saying that the trio of strong female characters in that film "are almost drag queens," before returning to the subject of "High School Musical" and noting the impact the trilogy had on LGBTQ youth.
"I have to say thousands of kids that have said, 'If it weren't for "High School Musical," I don't know that I would have ever been comfortable in my skin. I don't know when I would have been able to feel comfortable enough to come out, embrace who I am,' " Ortega told Variety.
UK newspaper the Daily Mail recalled that Lucas Grabeel told Buzzfeed in 2016 about how he caught on to Ryan being gay as soon as he saw the script.
"...the first thing I said was, 'OK, Kenny, Ryan's gay, right? I know it's Disney Channel so I'm not really gonna be gay, but I mean, yeah, right?' "
Grabeel recalled that Ortega told him that the character was much like Ortega himself in high school: Gay and still closeted.