Man with grey hair and beard wearing a white and black striped sweater, looking off-camera and smiling slightly against a gradient background.

Back to the City

| Looking alum Murray Bartlett talks ‘surreal’ San Francisco ties and playing an enduring Tales of the City character

By Chris Azzopardi

As Michael “Mouse†Tolliver, Looking alum Murray Bartlett is the third actor to walk the queer utopian enclave at 28 Barbary Lane in Armistead Maupin’s book-based Tales of the City.

The role was originated by actor Marcus D’Amico, who first starred as Mouse, the gay confidante of adorably fizzy San Francisco-via-Ohio transplant Mary Ann Singleton (Laura Linney), in the series’ debut on PBS in 1993. Paul Hopkins took over the part for More Tales of the City, in 1998, and again in Further Tales of the City, in 2001. Now, Bartlett, 48, portrays the Tales mainstay in Neflix’s new revival of the perennial saga.

The openly gay Aussie actor recently talked about Mouse in modern times and acting alongside characters he’s long cherished.

Having shot two LGBTQ-themed shows in San Francisco, how would you compare those experiences?

We shot some stuff in San Francisco for Tales of the City, but (unlike Looking) we weren’t there most of the time. But the show has the spirit of San Francisco, so it was interesting; there’s a real spirit to San Francisco that I connected to in the ’90s. When I first went there, I really loved it, and on my first trip to San Francisco I watched the first season of Tales of the City, and so my impressions of San Francisco are completely sort of inextricable from Tales of the City (laughs) and I projected Tales of the City onto San Francisco.

Was Tales on your mind while shooting HBO’s Looking, then?

Weirdly there was that thread for me working on Looking in San Francisco. We arrived to shoot the pilot of Looking in San Francisco on the night of my birthday and I rented this old stable house, which sounds kind of glamorous – it wasn’t (laughs). But it was beautiful and it had a garden and we watched Tales of the City, and then Armistead sort of became our godfather. We met up with him a couple of times and he was so lovely and generous with us. Even though I’m playing two gay men who live in San Francisco, there is quite significant differences in the characters, but the worlds of those shows are really kind of intertwined because San Francisco is so sort of bound to Tales of the City in a lot of ways for me.

What did the original Tales of the City mean to you?

Particularly in the ’90s there were very few queer characters in film and TV and a lot of them were tragic figures, so it was lovely to have these characters. I mean, they were tortured in some ways, but they were generally this wonderful family of people. It was great to have that kind of identification with real characters that weren’t, like, about to die or going through some crazy stuff that we got used to with queer characters.

During that time, AIDS was a ubiquitous storyline in TV and film featuring LGBTQ characters. And in the new Tales, Mouse’s HIV-positive status is reflected as just a small part of his everyday life. It isn’t dwelled on.

We’re at a time where most people with HIV are undetectable or they’re on PrEP, but it was interesting playing out “older generation meets younger generation†in terms of attitudes about that between Michael and Ben (Michael’s lover, played by openly gay actor Charlie Barnett of Russian Doll) because Michael still carries all the baggage of that, the fear and the way it was drummed into us of that generation that you have to have safe sex. Even though there’s these amazing new freedoms that have come with the developments that have happened, it’s very difficult to let go of that stuff. Michael went through it at a time when he thought he was gonna die and he lost a lot of the people around him. It was a huge trauma to carry into this new generation of freedom, and for him that’s interesting and challenging to navigate through.

TALES OF THE CITY

The show’s approach to the cross-generational divide is something I appreciate, particularly during that tense dinner debate where Ben calls out a gay man for using the word “tranny†and, in turn, he’s chastised for his young post-AIDS gay privilege. What about that scene struck you?

It’s such a beautifully written episode. We had such an amazing team on the show and Andy (Parker), our writer for that episode, was just phenomenal. The thing that struck me about it is that it throws up both perspectives of a younger and an older generation and it doesn’t allow you to take sides. You kind of agree and disagree with both, but they both have a point and I love that. It does a beautiful job of just showing the complexity of that sort of collision of those two perspectives, but it doesn’t say this one is right or this one is wrong. It just shows the value of both.

To be a part of a show that once left a great impression on you, what was that experience like? What went through your head when you stepped on set and there’s Olympia Dukakis as Anna Madrigal and there’s Laura Linney as Mary Ann?

It was completely surreal and I felt that the moment I knew I had the job. It was very dreamlike, partly because I connected so strongly to the show and it and the books mean so much to me personally and I was involved in Looking, which was very sort of interconnected because of Tales for me. Also amazing because I love those women as actors in pretty much everything that they’ve done, but I first came to them – well, I think I’d seen Olympia in Moonstruck before Tales of the City, but I hadn’t seen Laura before Tales of the City and so I strongly associate them with those characters.

So I was nervous in my first few scenes with Laura, even though she was just very gracious and friendly. But then once we started the scene, I’m talking to Mary Ann! It’s weird! Sort of no kind of acting required in a way (laughs) because she is this character for me. So it was very surreal and just a completely joyful experience. And Olympia, everything that she says just feels like she’s this sage woman reaching down from the heavens giving you this pearl of wisdom. I just wanna cry every time she says something. So it was just an absolutely beautiful experience.

Was there more pressure on you knowing that Mouse had already been played by two other actors?

I didn’t feel that. I don’t know why I didn’t feel that, but I think maybe because so much time has gone by in between and so much has happened to Mouse since we last saw him in the TV shows. Decades have gone by, and he’s gone through so much that I felt like he’s got the essence of Mouse but he’s almost a new character, as you kind of are after a couple of decades, particularly going through everything that he went through. He’s still got that buoyancy and that boyish, man-child vibe, which I love. But he’s gone through the depths, facing mortality, seen a lot of death. He’s been through some deep shit. Really transformative stuff. So I felt like I could really approach it fresh. I didn’t really think about it that much, to be honest.

You had a bit part alongside Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City as her gay friend Oliver. Say you were to get Mouse, Oliver and Dom, your “Looking†character, together for brunch – how do you envision that might go?

(Laughs) I think they’d probably get along. I feel like Oliver is a little more worldly, or likes to think of himself as more worldly, so he might find them a little provincial. I feel like Michael and Dom would get on well, but I feel like they’re of a slightly different generation and I think Dom’s life has been a little more sort of superficial than Mouse’s has. I feel like Mouse has been forced to go really deep and face his demons and death and all that stuff, and I think Dom is starting to do that but he’s still at the beginning of that. I think Dom would probably be slightly intimidated by that aspect of Mouse and Mouse would be like, “Yeah, I see you†(laughs). So I don’t think any of them would be fast friends, but I think they’d get along.

Especially with bottomless mimosas.

Exactly. Loosen things up!

In the new Tales, Mary Ann returns to Barbary Lane with an infomercial product she once proudly hawked: Bloodies, which is essentially a hooded Snuggie. Did they let you keep your Bloodie?

(Laughs) We all got Bloodies as a wrap gift!

TALES OF THE CITY

Are you wearing it right now?

No, I’m not. It’s really funny, but it’s one of those things where you’re like, “Great. What the fuck am I gonna do with this now?†(Laughs) You can have it if you like.

You haven’t worn it, I take it?

I mean, I’ve worn it just kind of, you know, to laugh at it (laughs), but not for real. I still have this amazing kind of Pendleton robe from Looking that I wear because it’s so beautiful. I never wear robes but it’s so gorgeous I have to wear it sometimes.

Do you keep in touch with the Looking cast?

Yeah! That was a total lovefest, that show. And we became great friends. And we’re still really good friends, all of us. A bunch of us live in New York so we see each other regularly.

You had a famously sexy porn stache on Looking and you have a beard on Tales, and because it’s not a Murray Bartlett interview without asking about your facial hair: Were there serious discussions about Mouse’s facial hair for this new Tales?

(Laughs) I had a little beard when I auditioned, and I’ve got a lot of gray in my beard. I’m not that much younger than Mouse, but I’m a little bit younger, so we wanted him to look his age so it seemed that having it gray was helpful in that. I also think that beards are still a thing – maybe they’re not anymore; I can’t keep up! – (laughs) but you still see a lot of beards around, and it felt like something very kind of his generation. Also I think he has this boyish spirit but he likes to have this manliness to counteract his boyish, sometimes girlish, spirit.

And Mouse is basically a daddy now.

Totally. I think Ben in some ways has it more together, but Mouse does have that breath of experience that does give him a sort of daddy vibe and daddy wisdom, but I think he’s happy for Ben to take the wheel at times.

Tales doesn’t shy away from queer sex, and in episode two there’s a great queer-sex montage. For Looking, writer-director Andrew Haigh was intent on making sure those sex scenes were done a particular way. In terms of authentically depicting queer sex and relationships, did you learn anything from working with him?

Andrew is kind of a master of that stuff. He does that so beautifully, I think. But I guess one of the big differences for me between those two shows is that Dom in Looking never really got into a relationship. I mean, he did a little bit with Lynn later on. But what was really great in Tales of the City, and what Charlie and I were really mindful of, was we wanted all the sex scenes, all the intimate stuff, to be very intimate. We wanted to focus on the intimacy – these guys love each other – and that they’re not just fucking, they’re actually connecting. Because I don’t think we see a lot of that. I think we get to see a lot of angry sex. I mean, it’s definitely changing and we’re seeing more, but I think it’s really beautiful for us to see more queer relationships that are loving and tender and, yeah, it’s sexual and hopefully feels very real, but the grounding point of it is that these two people love each other.

As editor of Q Syndicate, the international LGBTQ wire service, Chris Azzopardi has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Cher, Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé.

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