A chat with "Dante's Cove" star William Gregory Lee

Last month, I conducted interviews with several members of the cast of "Dante's Cove" which will begin airing its third season on here! TV in October. I love this campy, sexy show and its supernatural elements. One of the main reasons why is the performance of William Gregory Lee who plays the 200 years old Ambrosius who is dong better and better at adjusting to the present-day goings-on at Dante's Cove.
Lee tells me "it's been an absolute blast" playing the very complex role on the gay soap.
"When we first started the series, I had very specific things that I wanted to bring to the character and here! [TV] has kind of given me the freedom to kind of run with everything that I ever envisioned. We sit down between seasons and I tell them some ideas I have for the character, like some of the transformations that Ambrosius has to make in the present day. They've been really gracious and kind of let me create this guy. I want to keep him as real as possible."
While Lee has plenty of love scenes with the hot men on the show, among the most delicious moments come when he is facing off with his nemesis, Grace [Tracy Scoggins], who cast a spell on him and had him locked up for two centuries. She was his fiancee when she walked in on him having sex with another man.
"We have a phenomenal cast we put together and we have a lot of fun with the show. That's the key. Tracy and I, we get along like two peas in a pod."
I wondered how Lee, who is straight off-screen, feels about not only playing a gay role, but one that requires among the more explicit same-sex love scenes that you'll see on television.
"When I made my mind up that this was what I was going to do, I was going all the way no matter what. Whatever they asked, whatever they expected, I was going for it. I have no problems with it and it's been fun."
Lee is sometimes taken aback by the show's tremendous fan base: "We've got an amazing cult following. I get anywhere between 50 to 200 friend requests a day on MySpace from guys all over the world. Tracy and I have some sci-fi conventions - we both have a sci-fi background - and the sci-fi fans, whether they be gay or straight, are watching the show as well. And it's really a trip for Tracy and I to see. It's been really exciting for us to watch because when we started, we were such a small thing. We were basically competing with "Queer As Folk" when it had just ended. But we weren't trying to be 'Queer as Folk,' we were trying to have our own identity and I think the writers have done a really good job of establishing this tone. It's fun and different and they like to bill it as a guilty pleasure."