Daniel DiMaggio: The queerbaiting son on "American Houswife" grows up to play Count Chocula and post selfies

 

Link to the NSFW version

You may be familiar with Daniel DiMaggio, no relation to Joe DiMaggio, as Oliver Otto on American Housewife (2016-21).  I never heard of it, but I wouldn't have watched anyway.  Who wants to watch a sicom about June Cleaver or Donna Reed?  

It starred Katy Mixon as Katie Otto, a housewife who, although not pretentious herself, is immersed in the ultra-pretentious world of ladies who lunch in Westport, Connecticut, along with her husband (Diedrich Bader), two daughters, and son Oliver (Daniel). 

She has a lesbian best friend, and there's a gay character (Jake Choi) in Season 5, so there's a bit of representation.  The main problem fans had was queerbaiting Oliver.  

He is presented as gay, with everything from pictures of muscular men on his bedroom wall to an interest in ballet, to a boyfriend, the wealthy, femme Cooper (Logan Bell).  Everyone things they are boyfriends, anyway, including Cooper, who is upset every time Oliver claims that they are not dating.  But then he backs off and gets a girlfriend.  

Logan Bell (the femme one) is gay in real life, and states that he played Cooper as gay.  So why five seasons of "crumbs" that led nowhere?  Fans were irate when the showrunners were too cowardly to let Oliver come out.

Daniel already has two strikes against him (baseball metaphor, har har) for five years of queerbaiting.  Let's check on his other projects.

He was born in 2003 in Los Angeles, and began acting at age nine in the short Geisho (2010): a man (Horatio Sanz) wants to become the world's first male geisha.  Kind of gender-fluid.

Next, a 2013 episode of Burn Notice, which, I discovered today, is not about a hospital burn unit, in spite of the misleading title.  It's about a spy who was "burned" (fired). How the heck are potential viewers supposed to know that?   Daniel plays the young version of focus character Michael (Jeffrey Donovan). 

More after the break

Then some standard voice work and guest spots, notably the young Kal-El (Superman) on a 2016 episode of Supergirl.  Robert Gant, who is gay in real life, played his father, Zor-El.

And the Young Dusty, played as an adult by Mark Wahlberg, in Daddy's Home 2 (2018).

Daniel graduated from Providence High School in Burbank, a Catholic prep school, in 2021. I don't see any college listed in his bios, or any tv activity other than two guest spots:

A 2022 episode of NCIS: A group of teenage hoods breaks into buildings at Marine Base Quantico.

A 2023 episode of The Neighborhood, with Hank Greenspan as a gay-vague kid who gives us endless crumbs with no resolution.  Sounds familiar.  Daniel's character, Kiefer, does not appear in the episode synopsis.

His theatrical work includes acting in the plays at the Youth Playwrights Festival in Palm Springs every year.  In 2025, he played Count Chocula in The Kellogg Murders, written by Peyton Taylor:  cereal mascots Corn Flakes and Wheaties seek revenge on their mascot competitors.

A search for n * de photos yields two bathroom selfies (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends). 

Next question: Is Daniel gay in real life?  His instagram doesn't feature any hugging photos of men or women.  When a follower asked "When are you going to come out?", he doesn't respond, but another follower answers with a curt "He's straight." 

Looks like all we're going to get is queerbaiting and crumbs.

See also: Hank Greenspan: Femme boy plays only straight characters, but is he gay in real life? With bonus Brandon and Carlos

Riley Polanski: From Xanadu to Silverlake, with NSFW photos and bonus Michael J. Fox

Gideon Gemstone's Secret Life, Part 1: Jimmy Olsen finds out that the Gemstones do it big. Mentions Superman.