According to Kenny Ortega, Ryan Evans from High School Musical is gay. The famed-director just opened up about the character’s sexuality, and why he didn’t come out in the Disney Channel movie.
“We decided he’s probably going to come out in college. It was less about coming out and just more about letting his true colors come forward,” Kenny, who also was behind movies like Hocus Pocus and Descendants, told Variety.
And when the outlet asked the 70-year-old if he ever considered making Ryan, who was played by Lucas Grabeel, openly gay in the flick, he explained, “I have to be honest with you. I didn’t think at the time — and Disney is the most progressive group of people I’ve ever worked with.”
“I was concerned because it was family and kids, that Disney might not be ready to cross that line and move into that territory yet. So, I just took it upon myself to make choices that I felt that those who were watching would grab,” he continued. “They would see it, they would feel it, they would know it and they would identify with it. And that is what happened.”
He also opened up about the characters in Hocus Pocus.
“The fun of Hocus Pocus is — I mean, the girls are almost drag queens. I pushed for them to go there and kind of felt that we have an audience if they did, and God knows we did,” Kenny said. “They’re beloved characters and emulated all the time. Every Halloween, they’re knocking on my door. Those Sanderson sisters are back.”
“There’s just kind of a spirit and a fun that is representative of my own spirit and fun that lives under some of my work. And that makes it, I think, queer-friendly — if that’s a good way to put it. And I think that there has been so much progress that you can actually say that now, and people won’t freak out. Because it used to be people, they’d be like, ‘Oh, no! What is he trying this message to children?'” he concluded. “I have to say thousands of kids that have said, ‘If it weren’t for High School Musical, I don’t know that I would have ever been comfortable in my skin. I don’t know when I would have been able to feel comfortable enough to come out, embrace who I am.'”
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