The Path Less Traveled

If you’ve watched UnREAL, Lifetime’s series set in the world of a Bachelor-esque reality show called Everlasting, you might have recognized that Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman’s Jay is the conscience of the show.

Staying true to his conscience and his chosen path in life is equally important to Bowyer-Chapman.

In the world of Everlasting, where all that seems to matter is getting ahead and getting ratings, Jay stands out as the one person who seems to have a soul. As Bowyer-Chapman says, “He hasn’t sold it quite yet. Maybe no one’s offered him the right price! We’ll see as time goes on.”

Reflecting on his role, Bowyer-Chapman says, “It [being the conscience of the show] was something that was brought to my attention about halfway through the season, when we were shooting episode five, it was one of those days where we were shooting heavy scene after heavy scene. I felt like Jay was either crying or on the verge of tears, or I was on the verge of tears all day with the subject matter.

“It was one of the crew members who came up to me. You know, the kind of big, burly, hairy grip who came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You know, I think Jay is the moral compass of this show.’

"He’s the audience in many ways. We see the world of Everlasting through his eyes and through his heart.

“All these manipulative and terrible things that are happening on a daily basis, so that we start to take it as normal, and we don’t question it until we see it through Jay’s eyes. He sits back and questions, ‘Wait a minute. should we really be doing things this way? Shouldn’t we feel bad about systematically destroying these contestants’ lives on a daily basis?’

“That really put things in perspective for me. That Jay’s in it but not of it. He’s in that world, and he’s trying to climb ahead, and he should own his own goals at the end of the day, but he’s not willing to go about it in the same way that Quinn and Rachel and Chet are.”

Quinn and Rachel and Chet are the showrunners of Everlasting, played by Constance Zimmer, Shiri Appleby and Craig Bierko, respectively. 

“I can’t stand any of the choices that these people are making. It makes me cringe, and yet, I love this show. There are so many shows you watch where if you don’t like a character or you can’t identify with a character, you don’t approve of their choices, you change the channel. But, UnReal, you almost pry your eyes open. It forces you to sit back and watch and still enjoy it."

Being close to his cast mates helps to make the experience that much richer. Of his co-stars he says, “Isn’t it strange that it takes a really kind, empathic person to play someone who’s so devious and evil like Quinn or like Rachel?“

The show revolves around the relationships among the characters, particularly Quinn and Rachel. Playing one of the producers on Everlasting, Bowyer-Chapman has a number of scenes in each episode with the actresses, often at odds with them. And he thoroughly enjoys watching and interacting with his colleagues.

“So much is said on Shiri’s face. She’s such an incredibly talented actor without any dialog needed. She was able to portray Rachel’s struggle and Rachel’s story.”

Often the emotion of scenes is portrayed through looks among the characters.

“it’s something that Shiri and I discuss behind the scenes on a daily basis on the set of UnREAL. We talk about how telling a story is one thing, and there’s such incredible importance in that, but a real place that we always have to come back to is to be playing the relationships of these characters.

“Shiri and I established very quickly that Jay and Rachel have a very brotherly/sisterly dynamic. There’s a lot of love there, but there’s also a lot of competition and a lot of jealousy, which can lead to a fine line of almost hating each other, but we always come back to love.

“A lot of the discussions that Shiri and I have behind the scenes are very similar to the discussions that Jay and Rachel have, or that we would imagine that they’d have behind the scenes of Everlasting. We debate politics, we debate environmental issues, we debate black rights and gay rights, and trans rights.

“Neither of us are necessarily right or wrong, but we have created a very safe space within the dynamic of the two of us to be able to discuss these things and to lay our opinions flat out on the table and then explore from there, which has definitely created that dynamic between myself and Shiri which we just bring into the world of Rachel and Jay. So, exploring their relationship has been such a gratifying and beautiful experience for us this season.”

Jay’s relationship with Quinn is far less friendly, which takes some real acting chops from both Bowyer-Chapman and Zimmer. “It’s funny, Constance Zimmer and I have such a beautiful personal relationship in real life.

“We’re really, really close, but then trying to find that dynamic between Jay and Quinn is a totally different thing because they aren’t that close. So you have to find those dynamics and play that relationship onscreen in a completely different way.

“What Jay and Rachel and Shiri and I have is very similar, but what Constance and I and Jay and Quinn have is polar opposites, so sometimes it does take a bit of extreme stretching of acting muscles.”

One of the ongoing themes in UnREAL is the struggle to get and stay on top. So, if Jay made it and if he were offered his own show, what kind of show would he make? Bowyer-Chapman has some ideas.

“I think that Jay would want to host his own show at some point. Working in the world of reality television is what he does and what he knows, but working in the world of Everlasting isn’t where his passion lies.

“I think exploiting and manipulating contestants and systematically destroying these women’s lives every day of his life is definitely as far away from his dream come true as possible.

“I think, if anything, that he would like to explore the world of docu-series, telling stories of people who don’t necessarily have a voice of their own or who have been stripped of their powers to tell their own stories.

“[He’d be] telling a more truthful, a more pointed look at issues that LGBTQ people face on a daily basis or black rights issues, or what it is to be a transgender person, whether you’re a transgender male or female coming up in their formative years.

“I think that [he’d enjoy] peeling back the layers of illusion that society has placed on  these demographics of people that we’re so quick to label and put in a box and classify them as one thing, to peel back those layers and show some levels of humanity that we all have and show that we are far more alike than we are unalike.

“Those are certainly the stories that I would like to tell, personally, as Jeffrey, and Jay, while he isn’t a real human being, his perspective would certainly tie into mine in the way that I play Jay is certainly tied into my real world perspective.

“So I would certainly say that that is something that Jay would like to be a part of. Authentically and truthfully and positively telling the stories of demographics of people who don’t have the power or the ability to tell it themselves.”

Bowyer-Chapman is very much involved in doing just that himself. In fact, he recently gave a talk at a Human Rights Campaign gala that led to a scholarship being established in his name at the prestigious Bramon, Garcia, Braun Studio (BCB Studio) in Los Angeles.

According to the studio’s web site: “The BGB Studio’s Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman Scholarship is awarded to an LGBT+ actor of color with a fierce desire to explore and express what is unique about them through their acting and the leadership and generosity to use their talent to change the industry’s often limited perception of humanity.”

The scholarship means a great deal to Bowyer-Chapman, “To be able to uplift and support communities of people I feel reflect my own personal experience growing up as a gay, mixed-race person living and working in a predominantly caucasian, predominantly male-driven world...

“It was challenging, needless to say, for many years along my path, trying to find my own way and trying to find if and where i could fit into the industry in any capacity.

“So, to be able to give that gift to a new generation of young LGBTQ identifying artists or kids, or just human beings, really, is one of the most important and impactful things that I think could be done at this time.

“Growing up myself, I didn’t ever have examples or have any positive representations of gay actors or gay characters of color in television and film, and that’s what led me to feeling very alone, very much alone during my formative years.

“The Bramon, Garcia, Braun casting agency and acting studio in Los Angeles saw my speech and contacted me and said that my words had resonated with them and that they would like to be an ally and help encourage and promote other young LGBTQ identifying actors of color to come out and to tell their truth and tell their own stories and reclaim their own power.

“And a way for them to start that would be to offer a scholarship to help them do just that and to start it in my name. So, for me personally, it was one of the greatest gifts and the most precious gift that I could have been afforded.”

Telling the stories of those whose stories may not have been told before is also what Bowyer-Chapman hopes to achieve in his career.

“Isn’t it far more interesting when we start telling the stories of the people who don’t look alike and don’t sound alike or don’t dress alike or think alike?

“When we continue to tell the same narrative over and over again of the perfect family, or the straight white male as the savior or the leader or the love interest or whatever that may be, it leaves the majority of us feeling very much left out, and we can’t identify, and we’re left in a lurch, feeling like, 'no one looks like me, no one thinks like me, no one operates in the world like I do, what’s wrong with me?'

“That’s not the truth of reality, so when we start telling a much more inclusive narrative, when we start telling that story, the truth of what it is to be a human being in 2016, I feel like a lot of issues that we face as human beings on a daily basis on the planet will start to vanish.”

Because he feels so strongly about opening up the narrative told in entertainment, he is particularly careful in his own choice of roles.

“Whether it’s been to my betterment or detriment, I’ve said no to far more projects than I’ve said yes to. I’ve said no to far more auditions than I’ve said yes to because for so many years, for me personally being an openly gay actor, I was a little bit ahead of the game, ahead of myself.

“At 21 years old, I was working as an actor and I was openly gay. This was 10 years ago, but there just were more straight characters being written than I could keep up with. For every 20 auditions, I would get maybe one gay character.

“So, for many years, I had to take roles that I didn’t necessarily bind with or I couldn’t necessarily connect with. I didn’t want to tell that person’s story.

“I feel like I really learned through trial and error what feels good and what sticks, and what doesn’t and how far I’m willing to go for a paycheck.

“At 21 years old, I made that choice in a very naive state. I just wouldn’t play anything that didn’t feel good in my gut. If this is what it feels like, if this is what it does to me, no.

“My team at that time - I’m no longer with them - didn’t necessarily support me. They thought I had the potential to be their next A-List actor, making them millions of dollars, and they wanted to put me down that very commercialized, A-List path, and that wasn’t a path that I aspired to then, or now, by any means.

“As much as I love acting, which I do very much, as much as I love story telling, which I do very much, I’ve always known that if I was unhappy with the job that I was doing or if I was unhappy with the series that I was on, why am I doing this?

“Having the courage to step out of the shadows of oppression and to tell your own story is only going to lead to millions of people across the world looking at you and saying, ‘Oh my God, me too. I get it. I can connect to that. I can’t necessarily connect to this cookie-cutter, picture-perfect A-List star.’

“We explore the depths of our own humanity. To do that, you have to get a little bit dirty.

“Fortunately, today, I have a very, very supportive team around me. My agent, and my publicist, people who get my vision and understand the path that I am currently on, and that I visualize myself going on in the future and in the many years I have ahead of me in this industry.

“They get it, and they support it. And they are the ones who are helping me open the doors along my path to make it happen.”

Born and raised in a small farming community in Alberta, Canada, Bowyer-Chapman was somewhat removed from the society in which he now finds himself.

“My whole life I felt like, why am I here? What is going on? I couldn’t understand it until I was 25 years old and I moved to New York City.

“It was the first time I had really, truly been around a large population of African-American people and then seeing the struggle that gay people in an African-American community face that were far different from the struggles that I faced as a mixed-race gay person growing up in Canada.

And then moving to America and learning the history of the country, the pieces of the puzzle started to come together to me  and started to make sense to me. Seeing the level of self-hate a lot of black gay people in this country have for themselves was just so incredibly heartbreaking to me.

“Once I started witnessing that, and really connecting to that on a deeply personal level, understanding black people in America, hearing their own stories of struggle and trying to claw their way out of that world of self hate, it was a really painful thing to see.

“For the first time in my life, I was able to look at my own upbringing and my own path and my own story and say, 'Oh, OK. That’s why. That’s why I was raised in Alberta.'

“I have many African-American friends who identify as gay or queer or trans who aren’t self-loathing by any means and who have always lived in a place of truth and authenticity as I do.

“So it’s not to say that all black gay people in America are that damaged or that they’re unable to see the truth of the situation, but just the fact that I was able to escape that very damaging narrative that a very homophobic society and a very homophobic face of a religion can really damage young people, the fact that I was able to escape that and avoid that entirely really played to my advantage

“It would be a shame for me to have been granted all these wonderful gifts and these beautiful opportunities and not take full advantage of them and not be grateful for them and not share my authority and my path and my truth. Whether or not anyone wants to listen, that’s up to you, but I’m gonna keep talking.