Arts & Entertainment
Sue Ellen redux
‘Dallas’ actress on her former co-stars, life after Larry and the hit show’s gay following
Linda Gray as Sue Ellen on ‘Dallas.’ Gray says it’s been a joy to return to the show 20 years later. (Photo courtesy TNT)
“Dallas,” the reboot of the classic 1978-1991 nighttime soap, returns for its third season Monday night on TNT and promises plenty of fresh backstabbing and intrigue.
John Ross (Josh Henderson) is working to live up to his father’s reputation, Christopher (Jesse Metcalfe) is reeling from a failed engagement and Elena (Jordana Brewster) is consumed with finding the justice that eluded her brother Drew (Kuno Becker) and mother Carmen (Marlene Forte).
It’s a pivotal turning point for the show — this will be its first full season without J.R. as actor Larry Hagman died in November 2012. He was in seven of season two’s 15 episodes and his character’s death was a major storyline last year.
Linda Gray, whose iconic character Sue Ellen has been willing to help her son any way she can on the new show, caught up with the Blade during a break in filming in Dallas two weeks ago, where it was snowing.
WASHINGTON BLADE: Snow is somewhat unusual but not unheard of for Dallas, right?
LINDA GRAY: I know. I’m just in heaven. It’s beautiful.
BLADE: You live in Los Angeles?
GRAY: Yes. I’m in Dallas six months, then L.A. six months. That’s a nice combination.
BLADE: I understand more of the show is filmed on location than was true for the old “Dallas,” right?
GRAY: Yes. We used to come here in the ‘80s for two months and work six days a week, then we went home and did eight-and-a-half months in L.A. So here we do 15 shows and we live here which is really kind of nice. At first we were like, “Oh, we have to move to Dallas?” but it’s quite amazing because then we get to show the audience all the greatness of Dallas. It’s changed so much since the ‘80s.
BLADE: How aware have you been of the show’s gay following? Do you sense it’s any different now than it was on the old show?
GRAY: I’m very aware it has a gay following and I’m beyond thrilled. I have so many, many, many friends who are gay and I adore them. There’s a JR’s and a Sue Ellen’s here, gay bars.
BLADE: We have a JR.’s in D.C., too.
GRAY: Oh, do you really? It’s so fantastic to have the support and we’ve always had it and … it’s been great. We love you right back. Dallas itself has a huge gay community here and they’re very supportive as well.
BLADE: What similarities or differences do you see now in how the show is rebounding dramatically from Larry’s passing versus how the original series dealt with the death of Jim Davis (Ewing family patriarch Jock)? I know it’s not exactly the same thing, but both were huge losses to the shows just a few seasons in.
GRAY: The entire team has changed, the writers, everything has changed and it’s an evolution that is — well, I step back and I look at this 20-year hiatus and it’s very bizarre to come back and do it again, but in such a good way. So now I think the approach is kind of like we’re outsiders looking in and seeing how the Ewings have evolved. And now without Larry, that threw everybody a curve and those wonderful writers — I always applaud the writers because without them and their great brains and their minds that kind of go off in wonderful directions, there would be no show. They had last season already approved by the networks and when Larry passed, they had to scramble and again, I applaud them because they did a magical shuffling around to kind of piece this together and still be an interesting, entertaining show without the key, which was huge — J.R. Ewing and Larry Hagman, I mean you know that was a huge void for me personally and I’m sure for everybody in the audience, it’s huge. So I look at it as an observer and say, “Wow, what a great job they’ve done.” They have to handle everything as it comes, as we all do in life. You don’t expect this to happen, but it did and now what are you going to do with it? When Jim Davis died, the producers were great. They moved his dressing room right on the soundstage because just like Larry, he wanted to die doing what he loved. They didn’t say, “No, you’re going into hospice or something,” they moved his dressing room right on the soundstage so we would do a scene and come in and hang out with Jim. When you’re doing a series, you’re so bonded as a family. You step in there and you’re supportive and you send them love. I would say “Dallas” has been blessed with a little bit of fairy dust that has been scattered on us from day one. The cast was wonderful, the writers were great, et cetera, and now it’s happening again and since I was one of the originals, it’s amazing to see how similar it is.
BLADE: You worked with Barbara Bel Geddes (Miss Ellie) for many years. After she left before the last season, she never appeared in any final episode, TV movies, cast reunions or anything. What would she think of this new series? (Bel Geddes died in 2005.)
GRAY: She was a savvy, bawdy broad, is what I called her, and I would call it to her face. We were so close. I’d call her Mama, on and off camera. She was this crusty New England broad. She was feisty and fabulous and such a huge classy addition to the Ewing family. I really was so shocked when I knew she was doing a series because I thought Barbara Bel Geddes, you know she worked with Tennessee Williams and Alfred Hitchcock. She was so classy and so when I first walked into the room, I’ll never forget it. I saw Major Nelson — Larry Hagman. I saw Patrick Duffy — “Man From Atlantis.” And then I saw Barbara Bel Geddes and I thought, “What’s wrong with this picture? Is this a sitcom? What is this show?” Internally I started laughing because I thought what is this? … But I just watched this magical thing happen and, you know, the Ewings became bigger than life. So for me it was great to work with her. She was astounding, she was quiet, she would make great funny little remarks during the rehearsals and then when you had a scene with her, man, you better be on your toes. You better bring your A game because she could bury you with a look. She was to me the same caliber as my two favorites — Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. There was no nonsense with her. It was just, “I’m here to work, I know what I’m doing, I’m a professional, I’m Broadway trained, I’m theater trained, I’ve worked with the best so don’t mess around with me.”
The cast of ‘Dallas.’ The reboot of the classic series returns Monday night. (Photo courtesy TNT)
BLADE: But what would her reaction be to this new series?
GRAY: I think she’d probably sit down with a glass of Scotch in her condominium and probably just laugh her ass off. She’d probably roll her eyes, going “How are we back again” and “Look at that younger generation.” But she would be a hoot. I think she would love the new show, love the kids, complain about everything — she loved to complain. She’d complain it was too hot, or, “What the hell are we doing, it’s snowing today,” or “What am I doing in Dallas,” blah blah blah blah blah. Yet the bottom line, she would love it.
BLADE: Victoria Principal has been a little different — she’s said she’s against reviving Pam in any kind of dramatic way, yet has joined up a few times in a non-dramatic capacity like the Vanity Fair photo (1995) and the 2004 reunion special. Over the years do you feel the rest of the cast has respected her wishes not to revive Pam or do you think there’s been some arm twisting to have her join in more often?
GRAY: I think we all respect her. I don’t think she wanted to come back and I don’t even know if the producers went after her or tried really pursuing her, I really don’t know. When you’re asked to come back, your gears are in different motion. You’re in forward motion. You’re thinking, “OK, gotta get to Dallas,” and you don’t really say, “Why isn’t so-and-so here?” For each person, it’s their choice and her choice was not to be in it so you respect everybody’s choice. We don’t see her very often. She was never kind of with us, you know, she was never — Larry, Patrick (Duffy) and I were very close and I was very close with Barbara and she just chose not to be as inclusive. I don’t mean that to — she just didn’t hang out with us.
BLADE: Any chance we might be seeing more of Lucy (Charlene Tilton)?
GRAY: Those are great questions but I don’t know the answers. The producers and writers, they write the scripts and if Lucy comes back, great, Ray Krebbs comes back, Steve (Kanaly) it’s always great to see him and it’s always fun to see them all. I do see Charlene in Los Angeles. She lives near my children. You know, it’s this great family, but since they’ve added all the young new people, it’s crowded. How many people can you bring back? It is fun for the audience when you see Charlene (Lucy), Steve (Ray Krebbs) and Kenny (Cliff Barnes), but it’s more a question for the producers.
BLADE: Larry was so anti-smoking yet Barbara smoked a lot. Did they ever clash over that on set?
GRAY: No, she would just tell him to get lost or, you know, just dismiss him. I think she smoked more in private. I never saw her smoke on the set.
BLADE: Now that it’s so many years later, do you feel the dream season was a good idea? People seem divided on whether it was clever or a jump-the-shark moment.
GRAY: Well, I don’t think people know all the dealings of how it really came about. Larry called Patrick and said, “I want you back.” He felt J.R. needed that brother, the good guy-bad guy kind of thing. I remember he called Patrick and Patrick knew when he got that phone call, what Larry was going to propose. He knew that intuitively. So he went over to his house in Malibu and they had a glass of Champagne and they may have gotten in the Jacuzzi, I don’t really know what happened there, but he talked Patrick into coming back so it was up to the producers to bring Patrick back and that was not an easy task to come up with. You know up front, no matter what they did, they would be criticized. … That was one of the things about “Dallas” that was exciting was that people would talk about it the next day. Did you like this? Look at Sue Ellen’s hair. Did you hate this? What about Bobby? What about J.R. drinking? Whatever. He’d call it water cooler chat. Whether you liked it or not, we knew it was going to cause chaos. So they had the idea for him to do the fake Irish Spring soap commercial where they edited out everything but him saying, “Good morning.” … A lot of people hated it and just stopped watching the show, they said it was ridiculous. A lot of people thought it was funny. A lot of people went, “Wow, that was a great dream sequence.” So no matter how you felt, good, bad or indifferent, they needed him back and they accomplished that.
BLADE: You look great but still look like yourself. What’s your skin care regimen?
GRAY: You’re sweet, thanks. When my peers no longer look like themselves, it scares me. There’s not a secret, I swear. I have a great skin care regimen. I never sleep with makeup on, I drink a lot of water. Hydration is huge. I eat great. I cook most of my own meals. A lot of green stuff — we’re from California, remember. And that’s it. You know, a good attitude goes a long way. And I exercise. I do all the things we’re supposed to do. Sometimes I don’t want to. I don’t want to get up early and go to the gym, but I do. I think complexion is more important than pulling and cutting your face. I’d rather have a good glowy complexion, so I use good skin care products and I use them twice a day. It’s like brushing your teeth. There’s no big secret.
BLADE: Could you ever imagine a gay wedding at Southfork?
GRAY: Sure! Why not?
Books
New book examines Trump cuts to LGBTQ healthcare
‘Aftershocks’ details impact of policy shifts on HIV response, broader public health
As LGBTQ and HIV advocates continue to grapple with the Trump administration’s attacks on healthcare, a new book offers a timely look at what happens when public health systems — and the democratic institutions that sustain them — are pushed to their limits.
The book, “Aftershocks: Trump 2.0, Public Health, and Our Better Angels,” was written by Dr. José M. Zuniga, president/CEO of Fast-Track Health. Zuniga is a globally recognized public health leader with more than three decades of experience advancing responses to HIV, communicable and non-communicable diseases, and the health impacts of climate change. He is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Fast-Track Health.
The book covers the first year of the second Trump administration. It chronicles the impact of federal policy shifts and budget cuts on the HIV response and public health more broadly, including for LGBTQ communities. Drawing from policy analysis, frontline insight, and lived experience, the author reveal how decades of hard-won progress became vulnerable through Project 2025 and DOGE, but also a paralysis in the HIV and public health communities following the outcome of the 2024 elections.
“In other words, we were caught flat-footed when our opposition had a detailed plan to create chaos and disruption,” Zuniga says. “Thus, the book also offers Horizons 2028 as an antidote to Project 2025 as a starting point for a wide-ranging conversation about how we will build back better given the baseline pre-Trump 2.0 was already imperfect.”
Below is an excerpt from the book.
What Could Not Be Left Unsaid
Let me begin with a simple truth: I did not set out to write this book. Like many in the public health community, I set out daily to do the work of scaling prevention, expanding access to care, strengthening health systems, and ensuring that dignity, equity, and justice are operational realities. Writing, for me, has always been in service of action: policy briefs to shape decisions, editorials to provoke accountability, reports to document progress or failure, and books to synthesize experience into insight that can guide public health action. But Aftershocks is something different; it is not merely an analysis. Instead, it is a record of rupture, of response, and of what it means to continue when the ground beneath your work begins to shift.
This book was written because something changed, and that change came into sharp relief during the beginning days of the second Trump administration, including the erosion of norms, the weaponization of rhetoric, and the recalibration of governance itself. The change was not limited to policy reversals or budget cuts, though there were many. Moreover, it was not confined to rhetoric, though language played a central role. The change was structural and moral: a redefinition of how power understood its obligations to people, to evidence, and to truth itself. And for those of us working in public health, the effects were immediate and personal. We experienced a purposeful disruption of the public health ecosystem and a direct repudiation of the “health for all” principle that guides our work….
Writing this book was, unexpectedly, an act of catharsis. Not because it resolved anything, but because it created space to process what would otherwise have been overwhelming… Amid what many in the public health community experienced as both individual and collective trauma, documenting itself was stabilizing, allowing reflection without detachment and critique without disengagement. But catharsis alone is insufficient. This book is not an exercise in lament; it is also a response. If the period it chronicles is defined by disruption, then its purpose is to offer direction. Where Project 2025 represented a blueprint for ideological capture of institutions, language, and governance, this book offers a counterpoint: Horizons 2028…
Horizons 2028 is grounded in a simple premise: that the future of public health – and of democratic governance more broadly – depends on rebuilding systems that are resilient to political volatility. That means strengthening not only federal capacity, but subnational leadership. It means embedding community-led accountability into data systems. It means aligning health outcomes with social determinants and recognizing that equity is not an endpoint but a continuous process of adjustment and correction. It means treating global engagement not as optional, but as essential to national well-being. In other words, it is a roadmap not for returning to what was, but for building what is required…
I write as an Independent. Not in the sense of detachment, but in the sense of accountability to evidence, to outcomes, and to the people whose lives depend on both… Independence does not mean neutrality in the face of harm; it means refusing to filter reality through partisan allegiance. Importantly, it also means being guided by a consistent commitment to equity, dignity, and justice. These are not abstract values… They are tested in moments of crisis, when the gap between principle and practice becomes most apparent. They demand accountability not only for what is said, but for what is done – and for what is allowed to persist unchallenged. And they require the courage to name harm clearly, even when doing so is inconvenient or politically unwelcome.
That commitment shapes the analysis that follows, but it is also what makes the writing difficult. Because to document harm is to confront it. To trace its origins is to name decisions and their consequences. And to do so honestly is to risk being read as partisan in a landscape where truth itself has become politicized. But the alternative – silence, or false equivalence – is not acceptable. Not when the stakes are as high as they are. There is, however, a thread that runs through this book that resists cynicism, is not optimism, at least not in the conventional sense, but is something quieter and more durable: a belief that even in moments of rupture, there remains a capacity – within institutions, within communities, within individuals – to reorient toward something better.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Out & About
Archuleta to host book signing in Rehoboth Beach
Entertainer to meet with fans at Browseabout Books
David Archuleta will chat with fans and sign his book “Devout: Losing My Faith to Find Myself” on Sunday, Sept. 6 at 2 p.m. at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach.
The book is an inspirational account of his transformation from a closeted Mormon teen singer to a pop star who is comfortable with his queer identity. For additional information on this event, go to browseaboutbooks.com.
Archuleta will also be in Rehoboth Beach to headline the “Night of Entertainment” on Saturday, Sept. 5 for CAMP Rehoboth’s SUNFESTIVAL weekend, which includes the Night of Dance Sept. 6.
Visit camprehoboth.org for more information.
Friday, August 28
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Happy Hour” at 7 p.m. at DIK Bar.This is a chance to relax, make new friends, and enjoy happy hour specials at this classic retro venue. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Trans Discussion Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This event is intended to provide an emotionally and physically safe space for trans people and those who may be questioning their gender identity/expression to join together in community and learn from one another. For more details, email [email protected].
Saturday, August 29
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 11 a.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ+ community, including allies, together for delicious food and conversation. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Sunday, August 30
“Nellie’s DC Drag Brunch” will be at 12 p.m. at Nellie’s Sports Bar. Come get served like a queen by a queen. Join Sapphire Blue, Deja Diamond and their team of amazing drag performers for the most fun you’ll have all weekend. Tickets cost $58.51 and are available on Eventbrite.
Monday, August 31
“Center Aging: Monday Coffee Klatch” will be at 10 a.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ+ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of choice. For more information, contact Adam ([email protected]).
Tuesday, September 1
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host a drop-in session to share resources, provide service navigation, connect with community, and gather feedback. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website.
Wednesday, September 2
Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom upon request. This is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants” toward being “candidates.” For more information, email [email protected] or visit thedccenter.org/careers.
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host “Movement for Healing” at 3 p.m. This trauma- and yoga therapy–informed class is designed to help guests gently reconnect with their body and their breath. Through mindful movement, somatic awareness, and grounding practices, guests will explore how to release tension, increase mobility, and cultivate a deeper sense of safety and ease within. For more details, visit the Center’s website.
Thursday, September 3
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the Center. People will be informed on Wednesday at 5 p.m. if they are picked to receive a produce box. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email [email protected] or call 202-682-2245.
Virtual Yoga Class will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This free weekly class is a combination of yoga, breath work and meditation that allows LGBTQ+ community members to continue their healing journey with somatic and mindfulness practices. For more details, visit The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center’s website.
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