Matthew Morrison

The music man has moves to make Timberlake blush

Matthew Morrison

Matthew Morrison gets around. So if you spy the 31-year-old former army brat in the produce aisle, refrain from ducking behind the cantaloupes while you try to remember if he was that guy you woke up with the morning after three-dollar mai tai night a few years ago. You probably just saw him on Broadway in South Pacific, Hairspray, or his Tony-nominated role in The Light in the Piazza. Maybe you remember him from your work sabbatical of 2006, when you got unhealthily devoted to your “ice cream mornings” with As the World Turns. (And unless you were one of their seven fans, you won’t remember him from his unhappy year in boy band LMNT, pronounced “element” by the initiated, but referred to as “lament” by Morrison himself.) Likeliest of all, though, is that you know and adore Morrison from his role as Will Schuester, the triple threat of a teacher from Glee, Fox’s genius musical that just might renew your faith in the power and potential of hour-long television.

ELLE: So, Matt, you’re a musical theater star who’s been interviewed by The Advocate and much discussed on Manhunt.com, and you star in Glee, a program that’s referred to as “the gayest show on TV.” You must feel particularly proud being the first gay man to grace this page.

MATTHEW MORRISON: I’m not gay.

ELLE: I had indeed read in various places that you’re straight, but in light of the circumstantial evidence, I wasn’t sure.

MM: I grew up singing and dancing, so people have been calling me gay since fifth grade. I’ve heard everything you could possibly hear about it. But I do love gay people, so I’m not going to act like I was insulted or angry about it.

ELLE: But do you ever do anything to suppress your gayest traits? Like, on a club dance floor, will you keep a lid on your best moves in order not to look too much like Tommy Tune out there?

MM: Oh, yeah. I’ll do what I refer to as “the shoulder dance,” just, you know, move my shoulders and do a little head bobbing.

ELLE: What was the first moment you realized you were a heterosexual being?

MM: I was really sexual from an early age. My first kiss was actually with two girls at the same time. One girl would be behind the bush with me for a minute and the other girl would be timing us. Then they’d switch.

ELLE: Dirty! Who was your first sexual obsession from popular culture?

MM: Tiffani-Amber Thiessen from Saved by the Bell. I loved her.

ELLE: I heard an interview with Screech recently. He wrote a memoir that said she was easy. I think he referred to her as “Hollywood’s pass-around girl.” Who knows how reliable a source Screech is, but does hearing this make her more alluring?

MM: No. You actually just killed it for me. Thank you very much for that.

ELLE: Sorry. Now that you’ve worked on quite a bit of film and TV, has anything particularly embarrassing happened while in the proximity of a famous actress?

MM: Besides constantly having to wipe the drool from my mouth? Not really. Last week, actually, I was in New York doing a workshop for a new musical with Jessica Biel, this beautiful Argentinean actor Mía Maestro, and Salma Hayek. I really like smart women, and [Hayek] is really brilliant. We went out to lunch a couple times. We had great conversations all week, and she, like, cried when she had to say goodbye to me. It was a great romance without having any real romance.

ELLE: How long before I pick up US Weekly and read about you two shacking up?

MM: Oh, come on. She’s married to a billionaire! And she just had a kid.

ELLE: But her billionaire husband lives in Europe. Don’t you need a man in every continent?

MM: I don’t need a man in every continent.

ELLE: Is there anything you could find in a woman’s apartment that would convince you that you’re not compatible?

MM: A Snuggie. Have you seen those things?

ELLE: I’m actually wearing one right now. Imagine you had the ability to see the number of a woman’s sexual partners on her forehead. What’s the highest number you could see and still take her seriously?

MM: I want a real classy kind of woman, so mine’s going to be low. Four, I think.

ELLE: Four? I’m racking my brain to think of a place where you’d even be able to find adult women with numbers that low.

MM: I guess you’d probably go to church. But I don’t go to church.

ELLE: But you were such a player at a young age. Surely starting with that junior ménage à trois must have led to great sexual adventures.

MM: I was kind of a kissing bandit, but I actually held off having sex until I was 20.

ELLE: Wait—you didn’t go to church, yet you held out until you were 20?

MM: My dad is a nurse midwife, one of about only 50 male midwives in the U.S., I think. So my birds-and-bees talk consisted of him bringing home books with pictures of all these sexually transmitted diseases. I was so scared of sex that I hated the first few times I had it. I felt awful, like I was really doing something bad.

ELLE: Man, your dad totally accomplished what the Catholic Church has been trying to do for centuries. Maybe they should consider projecting pictures of genital warts at CCD.

MM: I don’t know if it would work for everybody, but it sure worked for me.

 

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