Marcus Scribner: Junior on "Black-ish" and "Grown-Ish" grows up, plays gay-ish characters, shows his stuff in some n*de photos

   

Link to the n*de photos

Black-ish (2014-22) starred Anthony Anderson as Dre Johnson, the head of an upper-middle-class Black family.  They are black-ish because they have to figure out how to maintain their Black identity while living in a ritzy all-white neighborhood.

Son Andre (Marcus Scribner) announces that he's converting to Judaism so he can have a Bar Mitzvah like his friends.

He starts dating a Republican girl, to the consternation of his liberal parents.

The kids hate Dre's favorite restaurant back in the hood.

They go on their annual Martin Luther King Day ski trip.

There were no gay characters other than Dre's lesbian sister (played by Raven Simone of Raven's Home), who visited once or twice per season, but Junior was queer-coded in spite of his occasional girlfriends.  He was an outsider, with quirky tastes, interests, and mannerisms that his family variously ridiculed, ignored, and worried about. Sounds like my parents with their "Go to work in the factory!" and "Get married and have kids!" rants.   

He had gay-subtext buddy-bonds with several guys, notably Zach (Nick Carson, who has a lot of muscular men but no women on his Instagram).

Marcus Scribner continued to play Junior on the spin-off Grown-ish (2019-24), which sends the kids to college.  Although he has a "will they or won't they" romance with a girl named Annika, Junior also has a gay-subtext buddy bond with Doug (Diggy Simmons).  Oddly, Doug is involved with his own "will they or won't they" romance. 

Fans continue to speculate that Marcus is gay in real life, so I checked his non-Black-ish work for gay characters.

Marcus has 27 acting credits listed on the IMDB, including episodes of Castle, New Girl, American Dad, and most recently, rookie cop Jonah Silver on Boston Blue (2025).

  TV Insider says that he "became close friends" with Sean Reagan (Mike Amonson) after they were both injured in a fire, and now he is a regular guest at the Silvers' shabbat dinners.  Sean has a female "love interest," so he's straight.  Jonah doesn't have any hetero-romances listed in the plot synopses, so maybe he is gay-ish.

Marcus has also done a lot of voice work:

Bell Zettifar in 5 episodes of Young Jedi Adventures: Nothing specified.

D'Angelo Baker in 38 episodes of Dragons: The Nine Realms:Gay according to the fan wiki, but straight according to Reddit.

Bow in 57 episodes of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: a female "love interest," but according to an interview in Queerty, he's "s*xually fluid."  So gay-ish, but they couldn't say anything.

So, Question #1, any gay roles?  Just some subtexts and closets.

More after the break

Daniel DeSanto: The gay kid in the Midnight Society, a Mean Girl, a Sicilian assassin, a short guy with a big ___. Who cares if he's straight?

  

Link to the n*de photos

Submitted for your approval: Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid of the Dark (1992-1996), an anthology of ghost and horror stories told by -- and evaluated by -- a group of teenagers called the Midnight Society.  

It aired at 5:30 pm on weeknights and 9:30 pm on Saturday night, so I didn't watch often, but I recall a few episodes. 

"The Tale of the Water Demon": Tony Sampson steals a gold watch, which draws the wrath of the water demon and threatens his gay-subtext buddy, Charlie Hofheimer

"The Tale of the Zombie Dice":  Jay Baruchel fights a video arcade owner who is shrinking teens and selling them as pets.

"The Tale of the Phantom Cab": While lost in the woods, Jason Tremblay (no relation to Jason Tremblay) stumbles upon a monstrous being who keeps teenagers captive unless they can solve a riddle.

And I recall three of the teen actors who appeared in the frame sections, squabbling, flirting, forming alliances:

Bookish intellectual Gary (Ross Hull, left), the leader.

Frank (Jason Alisharan) the leather-jacket bad boy

Prank-loving, irreverent Tucker (Daniel DeSanto, right), Frank's younger brother, who joins the Midnight Society in Season 3, and stays through the series finale.  He becomes the leader of the Midnight Society in the revival series (1999-2000).

You're probably expecting a profile of Ross Hull, who is gay in real life, and rather built; but Gary turned me off by crushing on Sam (a girl) and eventually dating her.  

Frank competed for Sam's affections, too. 

But Tucker never expressed any heterosexual interest; indeed, he seemed to have a "he's arrogant!" love-hate attraction to Frank. 

He pushes to get his friend Stig (Codie Wilbie) to be admitted to the group in Season 6.  In the revival series, he and his friend Quinn (Kareem Blackwell) found the new Midnight Society together.    

Plus his stories are about friendships that are threatened, or grow stronger, through paranormal peril.  A lot of gay coding for Nickelodeon in the 1990s.

I didn't follow any of Daniel's post-Dark works. Somehow I had the impression that he played Elaine's boyfriend Jake on Seinfeld (a recovering alcohol, he goes off the wagon due to Jerry's negligence, and seeks revenge).  But the episode aired in 1991, when Daniel was 11 years old.  Jake was actually played by David Naughton. 

When I was reviewing an episode of 100 Things to Do Before High School for my profile of Max Ehrich, I thought I saw him playing Mr. Roberts, the guidance counselor, but that's Jack De Sena

Our Daniel, a Toronto native, was a busy child and teen actor, specializing in horror for obvious reasons:

Gabe, who visits Egypt with his uncle and uncovers a mummy's curse in two episodes of Goosebumps (1995).

Theo in two episodes of The New Ghostwriter Mysteries (1997): he helps the gang and the ghost foil a corrupt cop, and later, thieves who target seemingly worthless items.

Zeke, a teenage theater employee who helps Taylor Handley foil The Phantom of the Megaplex (2000).  

More after the break