James' Interview Gaywatch: The dish from James of "Boy Meets Boy"

Gaywatch: The dish from James of "Boy Meets Boy"
by Christine Champagne

James Getzlaff hardly needs any introduction. We got to know the 32-year-old gay bachelor quite well as we watched him searching for Mr. Right on the Bravo series "Boy Meets Boy." So what did James really think of the fact that his dating pool included straight men pretending to be gay? Is he dating Wes now that the show is over? And can he possibly be friends with straight guys like Dan and Franklin, who tried to dupe him? Gaywatch got the scoop straight from James after the "Boy Meet Boy" finale aired.
I have to tell you this. I thought the twist -- throwing straight men into your dating pool and keeping that a secret from you -- was low. What did you think? Did you think it was fair to you?

Was it fair to me? No. As far as the show goes, after seeing all the episodes and getting the response and hearing what people have to say, the straight twist definitely did add an element of popularity. It added something that got a much larger audience to watch, and I have gotten quite a bit of positive response from those people. When they found out people were gay, they weren't saying to me, "Oh, he turned out to be gay after all. I hate him!" It was just, "Oh, wow. I didn't know. I couldn't tell." So when I realized that's what people were saying, and that there hasn't been any kind of negative reaction -- at least from people I've heard from -- to people's sexuality when they found out, that's really a good response for sure.

Wow. You have such a great attitude about this. I was so upset for you. I understand that the producers wanted to rock the boat with a good twist -- all reality shows do. But I think it would have been enough to surprise you with an old boyfriend you didn't expect to see, or something like that. I felt like this was nasty. But you don't seem to see it that way.

No. It happened. There's nothing I can do to change it. I just try to focus on the positive stuff: the friendships, the journey of the show, the experience, things I learned for myself. Of course, if I had a choice to do it again, I wouldn't. And if I were one of the producers creating the idea, I would have never put straight people in there. Like I told Franklin on the final episode, we have enough trouble as it is. The last thing we need is to have anyone think of us as a joke or to make fun of us just for entertainment. We try so hard to put out a positive image as just normal people, looking for the same stuff everyone else is, and that's what I was hoping for. That's the reason I did the show -- one of the big reasons -- and to find out a big part of why the producers did the show was to have this big kind of game .

In the end, when we were all done, said, "We didn't expect you guys to be so upset." I said, "What did you expect? Did you expect these really nice people to go on a show together and be told this horrible, horrible lie and just think, oh, that's fun?" I said, "We gave you our trust once, and you destroyed it. We're going to give it back to you and hope you make a really good show." And I think they did a good job editing the show and getting a lot of different perspectives, and I do think it did raise awareness. It does suck being the -- I don't know what the word is, not the victim, necessarily ...

I know what you're saying. It can't feel great to be the person who was tricked. When the producers finally informed you that some of the guys were straight, did you consider quitting the show?

Yes, Andra and I did talk about leaving. But we thought about it, and we knew the legal ramifications would be severe, and we're not super-wealthy people, and taking on a network for breach of contract would probably run into the millions and millions of dollars. Obviously, we were not going to be able to do that. And I did say -- I don't know if this was on the show or not, but when I was sitting in Andra's room, I told her I owed it to the guys who were gay, whichever ones they were, to finish for them. They didn't know anything until after the whole show was over. They had no idea until that night -- after the whole thing was finished, and they were told. So I owed it to them. I owed it to me. I owed it to the potential of still finding someone.

Were you suspicious about any of the guys' sexual orientation before the producers told you that some of them were straight?

No. My suspicions were that with some people, there was just something off, but it was never their sexuality. It was just that there was no chemistry of any kind -- not even friendship chemistry. That was about the extent of my "gaydar." It wasn't on.

Talk about why you ultimately chose Wes. And are you seeing each other now that the show is over? How involved are you in each other's lives?

Well, when I realized that it was Franklin who was straight, I had two guys left, and I was looking at my choices -- even from the beginning -- from a couple different angles. One was just as a friend, one as someone I was going to go on a vacation with, and then another was possible romance. So I was considering those three scenarios the whole time. Because, realistically, nothing could happen, and I might not like anyone, and how would I keep doing the show? So I was like, who would I want to go on a vacation with? That was also an idea. Who would be really fun and adventurous and outgoing? Who would want to climb mountains and jump off waterfalls or whatever it is we're going to do? That was another aspect of how I was selecting people, and when I got down to the final three, I guessed Franklin was the straight one. So out of the two other guys, what are the best odds of something coming out of that? Wes is much more outgoing and adventurous than Brian -- and a little more zany, a little more fun, and we connected a bit more.

Have you and Wes taken the trip you won as a prize yet?

No. We're going to go in March. It's an adventure trip, and it's planned for March. So we're making our arrangements.

What is the status of your relationship with Wes? Are you becoming friends, then seeing if it could lead to dating off the show?

That's kind of where we are. Now that everything is over with, we're trying to see how it all works out. We have so much more time. The vacation wasn't right away, and it isn't going to be, so we have plenty of time to just let it all settle in and sink in. We'll just take it slowly. Wes lives in San Diego, and I live . We don't see each other a lot. We talk on the phone. We e-mail. We do see each other when we can. We're trying.

Do you ever wake up in the morning and think, "I can't believe I went on a reality dating show to meet a man!"

Yes, especially yesterday morning .

Does it feel strange to think you've actually done this crazy thing?

Yes. It's been six months of my life. I don't know how it started. I mean, I remember everything, but it's just weird to think my New Year's resolution was to have more excitement in my life, and I did that. It's very unreal.

I have to ask you about Dan. I didn't trust him from the beginning, although it wasn't because I thought he was straight. I was more afraid of him fooling around with the other guys. Were you at all worried that these guys would forget about you and hook up with each other?

Yes. I remember thinking that right away -- thinking that if I was one of the guys, and I was on the show, what if I was more attracted to one of the guys I was in the house with? I know in our contracts, they really strictly forbade any kind of intimacy between anyone, but I knew that wouldn't stop interest. And actually, it happened.

There were people who took "interest" in one another?

Yeah, there were. I think there were two people. You get 16 people together, that's going to happen.

Are you going to remain friends with these guys?

I actually have made some great friends. I keep in touch very regularly with Robb, and, of course, Wes and Brian. We hang out quite a bit. We've all taken a vacation together. Andra keeps in touch with those guys as well. We see Darren once in a while. Brian and Dan are very good friends, so we see him.

Do you see Franklin?

I do not see Franklin.

Is that just because you aren't in close proximity to each other in terms of where you live, or is it because there is some resentment there? While I'm bringing this up, do you feel personal, one-on-one resentment for the straight guys who pretended to be gay?

Yes. Speaking of the show, I speak completely differently than I do of my personal feelings and experiences.

Why would you not have as much of an issue with the show as you would with the straight guys who were on the show?

Because the show is bigger than I am. I am just a guy who has a job, who has chosen to do this and be part of this experience, and my personal journey was the vehicle for the show -- but the show itself was something different than my personal journey.

Can you work out your issues with the people you harbor some resentment toward, or are you just moving on and leaving it unresolved?

When it comes to the guys, especially the straight guys, trying to understand why they would do something like this has been really difficult. A part of them doesn't want to say, "Oh, I did it for the money," because that might be too offensive, or they might think I'm going to freak out and hit them or something. Or they have a really good reason, I don't know. We were trying to get to what it really was. I don't care what their reasons really are, as long as they have one. Will that make it better? No, not necessarily. They're strangers. They were thrown in the house for 10 days. They weren't friends of mine before. If a friend of mine does something I don't like, we work through it because we're friends, and that's what friends do. These are strangers, who kind of just deceived me -- for reasons, yes, but the project is over, and I don't necessarily think that I want people like that in my life. I try to surround myself with honest, good people, and the whole reason we met was for a game or a game show kind of thing.

But you haven't ruled out having all of the straight guys in your life. You mentioned before that you're still friends with Dan..

I'm not really friends with Dan. I see him occasionally. He's good friends with Brian. If we all go out and do something, Dan will come. I'm just kind of working at it. We're working on it.

Got it. Moving on, you have returned to your job and your normal life. A lot of people who have done these reality shows want to get into show business. Would you like to get involved in television again?

It is a possibility. Is it a reality? I don't know. People are definitely talking to me, and I definitely have my guard up. I don't want to be played or anything.

I can understand that. But you had to have picked up some savvy from this experience.

Not too much. I got lied to pretty well!

By the way, are you surprised that Jason risked his military career to appear on this show? As you know, he was discharged from the Navy for doing "Boy Meets Boy."

When he told us on the first day, I remember he said, "I'm in the Navy." And I said, "Aren't you afraid of being kicked out?" And he said he was prepared. It wasn't like he just made the decision in the final five seconds. He thought about it, and he made a decision that he believed in. If you ever have a chance, ask him about it. It's really interesting, and I haven't had a chance to go into that in detail because he's so involved in all of the stuff that's going on right now. But he had his reasons, like we all did, and I think that might be part of the reason why the twist was taken so much more seriously than the producers thought. We all had to really put our lives out there, and I don't think a lot of us would do something like this knowing it could be a big joke. At the end of the day, the producers and the editors had the power to make it look good and look positive.

Now that you have gone through this crazy dating experiment, are you better at dating now? Do you have a better picture of what kind of man you want to meet and how to find him?

Well, the thing I was having trouble with was, I think, I always knew the kind of person I was looking for. I wanted to confirm that by being on the show and meeting all these different types of people I would not normally meet -- to see if there was a characteristic I said I wouldn't take in someone I was dating , or a characteristic that I said I would take, but didn't really want. It's never been about looks. It's been about personality, and it's been about smiling and having fun and looking for someone who is honest and faithful, and all of those things that I think are important. These people talk about beauty. It's just so fleeting. These gorgeous people are beautiful right now, but in a year, two years, five years, what are they going to be? And what are they looking for? They might be looking for something completely different. In my experience, people who are incredibly beautiful are looking for different things than people who are looking for long-term love.

You've had long-term relationships before?

Yeah, I've had two three-year relationships.

I still can't believe the "Boy Meets Boy" producers threw straight guys in the mix.

When it was done, we sat the producers down and said we could think of a hundred different twists that could have been done and this never would have been one of them, ever. I said how many reality shows have there been? Gobs of them, and they've never, ever -- yes, granted, gay men might sneak into one of those dating shows, or possibly a lesbian secretly sneaks into another one, who knows? But it's never been part of the show. Maybe it was bad timing. I just think it was too much of a coincidence that the first gay-themed show of this kind happens to have that exact twist -- because it was the only way it could ever work.

Do you think there might be a gay dating show in the future that doesn't rely on this kind of twist?

Well, the ratings were really good for the show. It was the second-highest rated show in Bravo history after "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." I think our two hours has really done wonders for the gay culture. I hope they could do something like this again.

I nominate you to host the next one.

Yes! I'll host it. It definitely could work. It would be great if they did it again and had a different format. You could bring exes back. You could bring friends back. You could do all kinds of things.

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