David Hyde Pierce On When We Rise, Frasier’s Legacy, and Coming Out

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http://www.vulture.com/2017/03/david...oming-out.html

You can divide David Hyde Pierce’s professional career so far into three acts. The first began when he moved to New York after graduating from Yale in 1981. He was a young, working theater actor until he got his big TV break — one brief season of Norman Lear’s The Powers That Be — before an even bigger one: Frasier, which began the second and most popular leg of his career. Most people know him as the slightly repressed, aesthetically high-minded, lovesick and lovable Dr. Niles Crane, a character he played with aplomb for well over a decade, accumulating 11 consecutive Emmy nominations and four wins. But with the accolades and attention came scrutiny about his personal life, and questions about his sexuality that he shied away from. It wasn’t until 2007, when he had returned to theater for the third stage of his career, that he publicly talked about his husband Brian Hargrove, whom he had been with since 1983.

I met Pierce on the Upper West Side at Cafe Luxembourg for dinner after he had finished up rehearsals for Hello, Dolly!, the Broadway musical he’s starring in with Bette Midler. He was sporting an impressively thick mustache for the show, which was the envy of our waiter. It’s one of his favorite restaurants, a place he’s been going to with his husband since the restaurant opened in 1983. “Once a year, Brian and I used to pool all our money and come to this place, because it was the greatest treat in the world,” Pierce said. “And now it’s one of our regular hangouts, because it’s been here virtually unchanged.”

Pierce is also currently on television in a role that hearkens back to the early years of his life as an actor living in New York. He plays the father of activist Cleve Jones in Dustin Lance Black’s massive ABC mini-series about the gay-rights movement, When We Rise. Over a hamburger and shared plate of fries (he insisted), we had a long conversation about the show, Frasier’s legacy, and his process of coming out as an actor in Hollywood.