The Marrying Type

Scott Thompson, the host of My Fabulous Gay Wedding. Photo Brooke Palmer. Courtesy Global TV.

The kiddingest of all the Kids in the Hall acknowledges that he experienced a rough patch early this decade.

“Yeah, yeah, first they firebombed my house, then there was my legendary ‘personal attack’ on Margaret Atwood and my big New York show was cancelled because of 9-11,” sighs Canadian comedy legend Scott Thompson on the eve of his TV comeback, starring as the self-proclaimed Wedding Fairy in Global’s new Wednesday night reality series, My Fabulous Gay Wedding.

It wasn’t any of the comic actor’s widely reported misfortunes that caused him to change his life, however. Yes, he was stunned when vandals torched his L.A. home over a documentary Thompson and then-boyfriend Joel Soler made on Saddam Hussein. And an incident at the Griffin poetry awards, where he’s said to have waved goodbye to a fleeing Margaret Atwood with a stocking phallus filled with birdseed, caused some anguish. (Thompson says he doesn’t remember frightening Atwood, but accepts that the story is now part of his legend.)

But it was an angel’s touch that prompted him to reclaim his career.

“I was doing episode TV work in L.A. I’d been there seven years and was feeling beat up. I didn’t enjoy Hollywood. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the sign!” Thompson says, suddenly overcome with laughter. “The sign’s great, but other than that — no. I was sitting around the house all day, then getting driven to an audition to wear an apron for an hour. I was tired of playing neutered gay helpmates.

“One day, I think it was after shooting a Touched by an Angel episode, where I played a theatre-lover who still lived with his parents — gay, right? — I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to…” Here comes that tumbling laugh again. “I knew I had to go back to Toronto to play a gay man helping gay people get married on Canadian television!”

“But this is different,” he says, recovering.

Fabulous gay couple Debbie and Nikki. Photo Bryan Porterfield. Courtesy Global TV.

Yes, it is. A six-part series featuring same-sex couples looking for help tying the perfect knot, My Fabulous Gay Wedding is full of surprises.

First, Thompson ambushes the couple, arriving unannounced at their home, and then cell-phones back to a crack five-member staff of wedding planners with his findings. Off the pros go, scouting wedding sites, finding proper outfits, securing entertainment. (Every wedding is pulled off in 14 days.) And while Thompson’s staff dreams up the fabulous wedding, he does more Sam Spade work, snooping on the couple.

In the second show — airing Wednesday, June 7 — Scott shows up at brides-to-be Nikki and Debbie’s house to help with renovations. “I think I’m drywalling,” he says, aiming a trowel of plaster at an unpainted wall. “God, I hope they like it,” he confides, “because lesbians have exacting standards.”

Nikki and Debbie finally return. While indifferent to Scott’s carpentry, they are delighted by the crimson thong he’s wearing to conceal a stooping worker’s greatest worry — plumber’s butt. Later, with the ladies gone, Thompson sorts through their bedroom, throwing aside an igloo-heap of brassieres — “They must have four breasts each!” — before happening upon a CD by cabaret singer Lea Delaria.

Set to tie the knot: Rob and Greg with their wily wedding planner. Photo Bryan Porterfield. Courtesy Global TV.

Delighted with his discovery, he contacts wedding central with the command: get Lea Delaria for the big day. (Other musical guests in the series include Ashley MacIsaac and Rufus Wainwright.) In MFGW’s June 1 premiere, Thompson further reveals the mischievous side of his persona that was so often evident in The Kids in the Hall (1989-95), a five-man demolition derby that pushed the TV comedy envelope right off the table onto the floor.

Taking Rob and Greg into a gym, Thompson leads the couple to a boxing ring, where he determines if they’re ready for marriage by feeding them lines from the self-help book Keeping Mr. Right, while they cuff each other around.

“Rob, it hurt me when…” Thompson begins.

“You cheated on me,” Greg says, finishing the thought.

The punches intensify.

“Greg, I’m deeply sorry…” Thompson continues. Rob seems at a loss. The ever-helpful Wedding Fairy leans toward him, whispering, “You could apologize for cheating.”

Thompson concedes MFGW is the closest he’s come to comic flying since The Kids in the Hall. “I don’t do any work. I float. I say, ‘Let’s wear kilts.’ They say, ‘OK.’ I say ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to break into their house?’ They say, ‘OK.’ I knew it was working right after the first wedding, when the crew and wedding party hung out together and got drunk. This is going to be good, I thought. This is just like a wrap party after Kids.”

Those “OKs” came from co-creator, writer and series director Daniel Gelfant, a former producer for Barbara Frum on CBC-TV’s legendary current affairs show, The Journal (1982-92). Thompson says one of the reasons MFGW’s free-for-alls are so productive is that Gelfant let him in on Frum’s trade secrets.

“Daniel explained how Barbara Frum asked a question and then let the camera to do the rest of the work,” Thompson says. “She’s right. The camera is a poultice for the truth. I had to learn to shut up and trust the camera.”

Thompson’s channeling of Frum aside, My Fabulous Gay Wedding’s biggest surprise is just how moving the actual ceremonies are. Reality TV is not a genre that has achieved too many moist-hanky moments. But the first two shows in MFGW generate so many tears you’d think wedding-cake candles set off sprinkler alarms.

Wedded bliss: Charles and Michael. Photo Bryan Porterfield. Courtesy Global TV.

“I bawled during every ceremony,” Thompson admits. “Gay marriages are different. Straight people don’t have society debating their right to be married.” Every marriage feels like a significant win in some historic civil rights battle, he argues.

My Fabulous Gay Wedding also represents a victory of sorts for Scott Thompson. He’s enjoying TV again — Canadian TV, anyway. In addition to MFGW, he recently completed an ongoing bit for Jeannie Becker’s Fashion Television, playing aggressively heterosexual fashion journalist Danny Husk, formerly a war correspondent for the Weather Channel. Then there was an April appearance on Comedy Central’s Puppets Who Kill.

He’s also currently negotiating with CBC-TV for an animated adult series based on the life and loves of his most famous Kids in the Hall character, Buddy Cole. And he has agreed to play Queen Elizabeth in an upcoming CBC archival series called Pop Up Royals, to be made this summer.

“I’ve been back a year and a half now and it’s great. The dark chapters are over. Yes, I lost self-esteem in Hollywood. The other things happened,” Thompson says.

“The good thing about dealing with stuff like that is that it makes you feel like you can handle anything. You feel like shouting, ‘Bring it on! Bring it on!’” Thompson laughs, sounding very much like a kid again.

Stephen Cole writes about television for CBC.ca.