Q: How do you come out of the closet to your friends?
“Your good friends should support you no matter what. For my experience, friends were the first people I told. And I was really confident in the fact that the friends I had would keep that secret and would support me though that process and all it entailed.
Being in the closet is such an isolating experience and you can feel so alone. Just reaching out to one friend that you trust and telling them. Tell them on your time, tell them when you’re ready, but even reaching out to one friend will allow you to feel confident in having the conversation, in talking to someone, confiding in someone. “
Dan Levy- IG Live with Emily Hampshire- April 2020
Photo: Nathan Congleton
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If someone comes out to you, please support them and respect their decision to tell more people on their schedule.
“If you have a friend who is going through something, you don’t necessarily need to call them and say, like ‘tell me everything’.
But it is important, in terms of friendships, to be aware of what other people are going through and from time to time, there’s a delicate way of navigating that, and it’s simply, shoot someone a text saying ‘if you need to talk, ever, know that I’m here.’”
Dan Levy- IG Live with Emily Hampshire- April 2020
Photo: Leigh Kelly
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We’re all going through something. Check on your friends. You never know who needs you right now.
“I don’t necessarily have a huge circle of friends, but I do have a small group of really important, meaningful friendships, and that means more than being able to invite 700 people to a wedding.”
Dan Levy- IG Live with Emily Hampshire- April 2020
Photo: Jeff Kravitz
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Quality over quantity. Choose to invest in the relationships that really matter.
“Would this friend have my back if push comes to shove? Some of them, I realized no, they probably wouldn’t. And you know what? Snip-snip, I cut them right out.”
Dan Levy- IG Live with Emily Hampshire- April 2020
Photo: Bravo
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This is such a good point- friendships and relationships should make your life better, not worse. Sometimes, relationships run their course and it’s okay to let them go.
“And sometimes I like to be included even if I don’t want to be a part of it. I just want to know that the offer or the invitation was there.“ -Dan Levy, Forbes, June 2022: https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottking/2022/06/03/how-dan-levy-seized-a-major-opportunity-with-schitts-creek/?sh=5fe032b51e4c Photo: Tostitos +++++ It’s such a basic human need, to feel included, seen, remembered. How can you make someone feel included today?
“It ended up having more to do with friendships in your 30s than actual romantic relationships. What would a love story look like if it was really about a group of friends in their mid-30s? The clarity that comes with age and the time you’ve spent with these people,”
“There’s romance in the movie, obviously, but really, it’s a love story about friendship.”
I got to a point where I had to write four pages a day to make the deadline and I said to myself, “Even if it’s crap, I’m going to put four pages worth of work down and edit through them at the end.”
Dan Levy, The Hollywood Reporter, June 2022
Photo: Dan’s IG stories
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The caption on this IG story was “Writing is Hard”. But we can all do hard things, if we take it one step (or four pages) at a time.
Dan has said this in many different ways, but doing what makes OTHER people happy is a recipe for resentment. It’s hard to stay true to yourself, but it’s worth it in the long run.
This is a little out of context- it was originally in response to a question about working with family on Schitt’s Creek, but I think it’s solid advice in general.
For those of us who are still working from home, possibly indefinitely, it’s hard to keep boundaries between work and life. Some of that is good (pajama bottoms on Zoom!) and some of that is not so good (literally not moving from the couch for 10 hours in a row).