Interview: With ‘I Love That For You’ and ‘Fire Island,’ Matt Rogers is stepping into the spotlight [VIDEO]
Matt Rogers is a star.
As Las Culturistas, the bracingly funny podcast host by Rogers and bestie Bowen Yang, recently celebrating its 300th episode and is set to debut the fake awards show of all awards shows, Matt Rogers is hitting a stride and a stardom that he’s been ready for all his life.
Growing up on Long Island, Rogers was not the gregarious and out performer you know him as today. In the closet and gravitating to sports to help protect that façade, it took working his way up through the New York City comedy scene to find himself and feel comfortable with who he was.
In Showtime’s I Love That For You, Rogers plays Darcy Leeds (we get in that name), a self-described “senior associate” (not assistant) to Jenifer Lewis’ head of SVN, a 24-hour QVC-type network selling snuggies, hair bangs and an endless supply of trinkets and knickknacks. He describes Darcy as the show’s Emily Blunt, using a Devil Wears Prada comparison, but in the Vanessa Bayer and Jeremy Beiler-created dramedy, Darcy gets to have layers and storylines most characters like his aren’t afforded.
Searchlight Pictures’ Fire Island (his first major film!) is comedian Joel Kim Booster’s updated adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice directed by Andrew Ahn (read my interview with them here) and the chronicles a week on the gay enclave of a group of close friends (including Booster, Yang, Margaret Cho and more) as they face the trials and tribulations of the Bennets and Darcys of their inner circle. Tackling the more insidious issues of the LGBTQ+ community while not sacrificing comedy and the comedy of errors, Rogers play Luke, the stand-in for Austen’s boy-crazy Lydia, giving more than just his trademark eyebrow raise but hitting us with his dramatic muscles as much as his giving us the comedy bonafides we know.
I sat down with Matt Rogers to talk about his affection for his I Love That For You co-stars and side-stepping the gay assistant trope, going from Long Island to Fire Island and so much more.
New episodes of I Love That For You stream every Friday and then air Sunday on Showtime, Fire Island docks June 3 exclusively on Hulu. Matt Rogers is Emmy eligible for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
Photos: Ryan Duffin, Curtis Brown
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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