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Gale Harold's dream role would take him from Wisteria Lane to ... Christmas Town?


Tuesday, December 2, 2008

by: Christie Keith
Source: newnownext.com
Edited by: Marcy

When it comes to his favorite roles, does Gale Harold prefer Liberty Avenue or Wisteria Lane? Neither, he told AfterElton.com. It turns out he's more of a ChristmasTown kind of guy.

We talked to Gale after he joined the cast of Desperate Housewives earlier this year. But when a serious motorcycle accident put him in the hospital with a brain injury and fractured shoulder in October, we put the piece on hold until we knew if he'd be all right, and whether or not he'd be able to return to the series.

Because AfterElton.com editor Michael Jensen made the mistake of letting our readers know we'd done the interview, he started getting a steady stream of emails from Gale's fans wondering if and when it would see the light of day. We're still holding back on the Desperate Housewives parts – and some QAF comments, too – for a future article, but that's not all Gale talked about. And since a lot of what he did say was downright Christmas-y, we decided to take advantage of the holidays and share it with you.

Find out what role Gale would love to find in his stocking, after the jump!

Harold began his television career playing uber-gay bad boy Brian Kinney, acted in a number of small independent films, did a little Tennessee Williams on stage, and starred in the short-lived Fox crime drama Vanished before joining the cast of Desperate Housewives as Susan's (Teri Hatcher) artist boyfriend, Jackson Braddock. But what role would he most like to play that he hasn't yet?

"Sam, the Burl Ives role in Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer," he said firmly. "What Burl Ives brought to the studio when he was doing those voices… I mean, you think Brian Kinney had an impact? For anyone who grew up in the United States around the same time I was growing up, you’d know that voice, have seen the Christmas special with the stop motion animation. It's an iconic role. That's what I'm interested in."

He paused, and laughed. "Or the ice ape, the ice monster. The Abominable Snow Monster. Or… what was his name, Timmy?"

Did he mean Hermie, the elf who wanted to be a dentist? No, he said; he meant one of the toys on the Isle of Misfit Toys. (AfterElton.com's crack fact check team has concluded, perhaps wrongly, that Gale was referring to Charley-in-a-box.)

"It's only a few months until Christmas," Gale said. "Go with this. Make it the lead. Don't bury it."

Then he named a few backup careers if acting was off the table. "Real estate appraiser," he said. "Musician. The guy that runs the computer that makes the robots do their thing." He added sadly, "But you can’t get that job."

Unfortunately for Gale, it doesn't look like anyone's contemplating a re-make of Rudolph. On the bright side, he's finally out of the hospital. We checked in with his publicist, Nancy Seltzer, to see how he's doing and if he'll be back at work on Desperate Housewives in the near future. "Gale's doing really well," she said, but added, "As for when he will start shooting again, I'm afraid we don't know yet."

His fans hope he'll return to Wisteria Lane soon, but as a diehard Rudolph fan, I'm holding out for ChristmasTown.