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Thanks to Penny for transcribing the interview and the scans
If you're catching Oz for the first time on HBO (or on the season 1 and 2 DVDs), here's a useful guide to who's who, and who's gay
A Tobias Beecher (played by Lee Tergesen): A lawyer jailed for killing a girl while driving drunk, Beecher has been with us since the show's beginning. At first, Schillinger turned him into his "prag (bitch)" branding a swastika on his ass, raping him, and forcing him to cross-dress. Having fought back since, today's Beecher prefers to be Keller's consensual lover and is fighting to get him off death row.
B Vern Schillinger (played by J.K. Simmons): Head of the neo-Nazi Aryan Brotherhood and a perpetual thorn in Beecher's side. He's responsible for the murder of one of Beecher's children and suffered the loss of his own two teen sons, all casualties of their war.
C Chris Keller (played by Christopher Meloni): When introduced in season 2, Keller appeared to be Beecher's adoring guardian angel. It was a ruse; Schillinger had enlisted him to break Beecher's arms and legs. Secretly endeared, however, Keller spent the next several seasons in a fierce love-hate struggle to win Beecher's heart, at one point famously showing what Genet would call his "bronze eye" in taunting flirtation. "To me, it was never a gay relationship per se", says series creator Fontana. "It's two men or two people struggling to find and maintain love in an environment that completely works against them.
D James Robson (played by R.E.Rodgers): An exiled member of the Aryan Brotherhood - rejected after receiving a black man's gums in a transplant - he's currently reduced to prag and taking spoons up the rear. Yes, spoons.
Prisoners of Love
By Lawrence Ferber
The men behind HBOs gritty, sexy Oz talk about the controversial show as it plows through its final season
 click for larger image
The pair needle each other like real-life (and less dysfunctional) lovers in between recollections. Tergesen laments the terrible drag he was forced to don as bitch to diabolical white supremacist Schillinger (Spiderman's JK Simmons) during the first season. "That fucking bullshit, two ripped t-shirts for a dress and those fucking gold heels," he grouses. "Give me something higher up that's going to show off my butt a little more." More fondly recalled are the numerous onscreen French kisses, which Tergesen & Meloni took off-set with playful lip-locks at the 2000 GLAAD Media Awards.
"It made perfect sense to me that they would kiss," proffers series creator Tom Fontana. "Here are these two happily married guys kissing at the gay awards and letting it be photographed because their attitude is, 'If people don't understand, fuck 'em.' Those guys in particular have been incredibly ballsy in doing anything I asked them to do."
In fact, Meloni & Tergesen had to push for even more explicitly gay content. While shooting a scene that ended with a show of affection, the director of that episode grew uncomfortable, calling "Cut!" early and giggling. "Finally we were like, "hey can you just let it run for a minute?' which they always do on these scenes," Tergesen recalls. "And the director goes, 'Why, are you going to blow him?' The truth was, a real moment was happening."
"And you called him out," Meloni recalls proudly. "Lee goes, 'Look, just because you're uncomfortable with the sexuality going on here doesn't mean you have to rain on our fucking parade.''"
Also tough to negotiate are the show's plethora of nude scenes. Practically every Oz character has shown all for the cameras, but Fontana reveals why some actors show more than others. "The truth is," he says, "every actor who said they couldn't (do frontal) - and they go into elaborate 'I'm protecting my family' excuses - just have the smallest penises! When you see their butts but not their fronts, you know the story."
And while Tergesen & Meloni aren't gay, a number of gay actors have appeared on the program. Charles Busch portrayed a gay murderer two seasons ago. Tony-winner B.D. Wong has inhabited the sexually ambiguous Father Ray Mukada since the beginning, and James Pelacio - a.k.a. Fiona St. James, ex-empress of the Imperial Court of New York - has played a gender-bending Oz gay gang member since season 2. Pelacio credits the show for breaking new ground before Queer as Folk, bringing homoeroticism home even if the characters weren't outwardly gay. "Oz definitely was one of a kind, and I think it broke the mold," he nods.
Oz's final season boasts Broadway legends Joel Grey and Patti LuPone as well as a new queer character that Fontana calls "kind of a cross between Peter Gatien and Michael Alig." As for that long-strained Beecher-Keller romance - will it go out with a smile, a shanking, or Keller's execution? "Oh, it's Oz," observes Fontana, laughing sardonically. "I don't want to make any false promises. It's another year in Oz is all I can say."
For their part, Meloni & Tergesen are sad their sentence together has finally ended. Or has it? "It's sad, but I'm excited," says Tergesen, sighing, "I am going to miss working with Chris. He and I went to see Tool on Halloween night. We just went out as ourselves, which I guess you can interpret however you like."
© The Advocate
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