Just Absolutely Fabulous

Actor Fab Filippo spreads his charm, talent and good looks

Two young women are sitting on the patio of Kalendar Koffee House on College Street. It's a hot Tuesday afternoon in July and the women are having their lunch and talking about work and minding their own business. And then Fab Filippo sits next to them.
Best known these days as the romantic and poetic Ethan Gold from "Queer as Folk," the Toronto-born actor has worked extensively in film, television and theatre both in Canada and south of the border. He played older brother Dom Ramone on the Global TV series "Ready or Not," Buffy's boyfriend Scott Hope on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and the lead in the critically acclaimed Canadian film, Waydowntown, which won the City Award for Best Canadian Feature at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.
On top of all that, Filippo, 29, is boyishly handsome with a laid-back nature and a smart and charming confidence.
From the corner of my eye I see one of the young women leaning toward us, trying to find out what we're talking about.
When Filippo excuses himself to go to the washroom, the woman turns to me.
"Excuse me, can you tell me who that is," she asks. "He looks so familiar."
I tell her his name and list some of the shows he's been on.
The woman nods. "Oh, I remember that," she says.
Then I tell her he was recently on "Queer as Folk."
"Ohh, right." She then looks at her friend and says, "It's like he's from a dream."
Fab Filippo actually wanted to be a musician at first and even took piano lessons. He was particularly inspired by La Bamba, the 1987 film about '50s rock musician Richie Valens. He was working in a movie theatre at the time and remembers looking up at the screen and thinking, "I could do that - I could entertain people." But then in high school he was in a production of "Grease," and dreams of being a musician got transformed into dreams of becoming an actor.
He's been performing ever since.
"Queer as Folk," also known as QAF by aficionados across North America, takes a witty and irreverent look at the lives and loves of a group of gay and lesbian friends. The show is situated in Pittsburgh but is actually filmed in Toronto and it brought Filippo back from Los Angeles, where he had lived and worked for years.
Though Filippo's character is no longer on the show, his role on QAF has definitely garnered him a following, and sometimes from the most unlikely of places. Young girls have approached him and told him how much they and their mothers love the show and his character.
But the role that has resulted in a slew of devoted new fans and a ton of fan Web sites began in an unlikely way. Filippo wasn't particularly interested in doing the show at first and he refused to audition. But with time he decided that he was just the guy to play the new love interest who comes between Brian and Justin, QAF's answer to Luke and Laura.
"I was very confident that I was the guy for the role," Filippo says. "I knew I could do it."
And the legion of fickle and devoted QAF fans received him with open arms, as did the show's tight-knit cast and crew.
"All of those people are incredible people. That show is filled with people who are really trying to make something special," Filippo says.
So how did a straight Italian-Canadian son and only child tell his Calabrese mother that he was going to do some very erotic stuff on TV?
Filippo, the consummate actor, explains how it went through a dialogue in which he also takes the role of his mother, complete with a broken English accent.
"Ma, I'm doing a show. It's a gay show. I'm playing a gay guy."
"Oh, that's OK."
"And there's sex."
"What?!"
"I'm going to be kissing guys. I'm going to be doing that kind of stuff."
"Oh my God but why? Why you gonna do this?"
"Because it's a good show. Ma, it's going to shock people and people are going to notice when you shock them."
"OK. I think maybe that's nice."
"And by the way, Ma, I'm buying a house."
"Oh!!! That's OK!"
Indeed, QAF gave Filippo a certain amount of financial freedom to buy a Victorian home in downtown Toronto, something the actor hadn't expected to be able to do for decades.
"When you do this work you make the decision that you're probably going to spend a lot of your life not having the kind of stuff that accountants and doctors have," Filippo says. "I love it. I feel accomplished."
And there are more accomplishments on the way. Filippo just got back from Italy where he finished shooting "Lives of the Saints." The miniseries, which is expected to air on CTV next winter, is based on the trilogy of novels written by Nino Ricci about Vittorio Innocente, a young Italian boy who makes a new life in Canada after his mother dies during the voyage.
Filippo read the books years ago and fell in love with them. When he heard that the miniseries was going to be made, he was determined to get the part of Vittorio. But he had to fight for it, and with the support of director Jerry Ciccoritti, Filippo's determination won out the naysayers.
The experience proved to be one Filippo will always remember.
"It was incredibly intense," he says. "It was filled with emotion and filled with all this stuff that was very personal and that started to come out."
Sophia Loren plays the mother in the miniseries, and the prospect of working with La Loren is something that initially intimated Filippo. In one intensely volatile scene he had to yell at Loren, but he noticed he was afraid to let loose on his fictional mother and he was practically leaning outside of the shot.
But soon Filippo got more comfortable with the idea of working with the legendary Italian actress, and he loved it.
"She's so regal, so strong, so much like a queen in every way. She's gorgeous. She's got balls of steel and she's so feminine," Filippo says.
Now that he's back home, Filippo wants to get back to his writing and get to work on a play. Along with his film and TV credits, Filippo is also a noted playwright whose work has shown at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Tarragon Theatre.
"One definitely informs the other and one makes the other better," Filippo says about his acting and writing. "I find that right now I'm juggling all these options than knowing what my passion is. Neither takes precedence. There are great things about both. I like the writing because it's control - I'm God. I get to make the world. But I love acting because my job is to go to work every day and be in the moment."
Along with writing, Filippo plans to spend the summer relaxing and enjoying his new home. In August he starts rehearsals for "This is Our Youth," a play directed by Woody Harrelson that'll open in September at the Berkeley Street Theatre.
And for QAF fans, there's also the possibility that Ethan might return to once again add a sense of romance and poetry to the show.
"They might call. I don't know," says Filippo. "I don't see how they can't bring the character back."
But if they don't, the multi-talented Filippo will be just fine.

Publication Date: 2003-07-20
Story Location: http://www.tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2959