“Baywatch” actor Alexandra Paul was happy to help her friend and costar Jaason Simmons back before he could safely come out as gay.
Paul said she was Simmons’ “beard” while talking to People at the premiere of the upcoming docuseries “After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun,” on Monday, telling the magazine she let tabloids think the two were a couple during an era when it could be dangerous to be out and proud.
“Back in the 1990s, 30 years ago, if you were a gay actor in Hollywood, not only would that affect your career negatively, but it could also affect you just out and about in the streets,” she said. “You weren’t as safe.”
Paul said Simmons was careful to keep his personal life private while he played hunky Australian lifeguard Logan, a character Paul described as “a heterosexual guy who wanted to be [with] every woman on the show.”
“That just shows what a good actor he is because yes, he was gay,” she said. “He and I were very, very close on the show and I became his beard, so to speak.”
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Paul remembered being “so affectionate with each other” on set and off that it wasn’t too difficult to pretend they were romantically involved.
“We just let them think what they thought,” she recalled, adding, “It was like people saw us together and then that started on its own. So, we just went along, because I was only 22, 23 at the time.”
While Paul and Simmons were keeping up their ruse, “After Baywatch” director Matthew Felker remembered that, in the ’90s, outing gay actors was “like a sport for paparazzi.”
“They hunted [Simmons] like an animal,” he told People.
Simmons publicly came out in 2008, announcing his relationship with his then-fiancé, Irish actor John O’Callaghan, in the Australian magazine New Idea.
In a 2014 interview with TooFab, the actor said he was grateful for how much his “Baywatch” castmates respected his privacy.
“Everybody knew, I just didn’t speak about my private life, I’m pretty shy and introverted,” he told the site. “So to go in a show when you’re like that, it takes a lot of adjusting. I was like, baby steps. I was in a relationship for the whole time and they were all aware and it was fantastic and no issue.”