Golden Boy Turned Gay Role Model — Neil Patrick Harris Has a Trick Up His Sleeve

Neil Patrick Harris is a magician, literally. He does magic tricks (video below). He’s on the board of theMagic Castle the infamous LA magic club. And he hosted the World Magic Awards last year. He also likes scavenger hunts!

But Harris’ career has also been magical. In the past five years, Harris has both come out publicly and played a rough-around-the-edges lech on CBS’ How I Met Your Mother. And during his transformation from Doogie Howser to gay grown-up, Harris has magically remained somebody that straight men kind identify with and women can fall for.

That’s the angle of Emily Nussbaum’s cover story in this week’s New York magazine which catches up with Harris in the middle of his prepwork as a producer and host of this Sunday’s Emmy Awards.

Still, he’s trying to insert his taste into the proceedings. He’d love this year’s installment to be the “Classy Emmys,” he says, with self-mocking air quotes. Superb dancing. Uncheesy musical guests. He originally wanted the Muppets for the opening number—Statler and Waldorf up in the balcony!—but that plan proved too difficult to stage.

When she’s not discussing Harris’ maturation as an actor or involvement in Emmys, Nussbaum picks the brain of Harris, the cute child star who grappled with his sexuality for years before eventually coming out to his fans in People magazine in 2006. Since speaking out about his private life, Harris has maintained a five-year relationship that he doesn’t try to hide and somehow maintained his golden boy persona and protected, nay expanded, his professional possibilities.

The idea all along has been to acknowledge the fact of his sexuality, then change the subject to his talent. Still, there was a kind of alchemy involved. Maybe it was Harris’s easy style of masculinity, at once unthreatening and seductive. Maybe the timing was right, coming after he’d proved he was more than a Trivial Pursuit punch line. Or maybe he’d learned, from his own extended personal coming-out process, how to handle the expectations of a wider audience …

“One wants to be sexy to everyone.” It’s one advantage of coming out, [Harris] tells me: “As Barney, I get to make out with all sorts of girls. And I’m allowed to say that women are sexy and not have them say, ‘That’s not true!’ But I’m now in a really fun position, where I can tell a guy that he’s sexy, and most”—he raises an eyebrow—“aren’t put off by that.”

Harris went on the Late Show earlier this month, and Letterman was noticeably rattled by how sharp his guest was — even grumbling that Harris was doing his own segues. But we’ll have to wait until this weekend to see if Harris can maintain the hype, maintain his confidence, keep the magic alive. After all, the Emmys are no Tony Awards — and definitely no World Magic Awards.

Neil Patrick Harris’s recent Letterman appearance(September 4, 2009):

NPH on doing magic tricks (and wearing a sweater vest) on Ellen:

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Doogie Howser, Emmy Awards, Emmys, Gay, How I Met Your Mother, Neil Patrick Harris, New York, New York Magazine, NPH, NY Mag

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