News > Heroes in gay controversy
December 12, 2006
Content taken from TV.com:
On Monday, gay-themed site AfterElton.com posted a story stating that the character of Zach, best friend of the regenerating cheerleader Claire, was originally gay but was quietly changed. It cites instances in the series and an interview show creator Tim Kring conducted before the show premiered wherein Kring says Zach, played by Thomas Dekkar, is gay.
Now, AfterElton says that Dekkar's management insists the character of Zach is not gay. An NBC spokesperson backs up the assertion that Dekkar's character is straight.
Today, show creator Tim Kring told the Web site that indeed, the character was changed from gay to straight. Kring says the change only occurred because of the needs of the story.
"I am very sorry this has caused concern for the readers of your website. It was certainly not our intention to confuse the issue of Zach’s character being gay," Kring wrote in an email. "We have too much respect for our audience to do that intentionally. However, it has simply become too complicated behind the scenes to push this issue further with this particular character. We apologize for misleading the audience, and wish that we could have handled things better on our end. But making a TV show is often a very imprecise business."
Zach was the confidante of Claire (Hayden Panettiere), a high-school cheerleader who can magically regenerate herself after suffering mortal injuries. Zach had been understanding of Claire's "different" nature, even keeping a videotape of her abilities a secret. In the most recent episode, his memory was wiped by Claire's shadowy father.
