‘Scandal’ Star Guillermo Díaz Says Hollywood Was More Comfortable Seeing Him as a Drug Dealer Than a Gay Character

For more than 3 decades, Guillermo Díaz has been one of television’s most recognizable character actors, but his path to roles like Huck in ‘Scandal’ was anything but straightforward. The actor has now opened up about Hollywood typecasting early in his career, and how being openly gay collided with the parts he kept being offered. It’s a candid look at how an industry can box in a performer long before he ever gets the chance to show his range.

Born in New Jersey to Cuban parents and raised in Washington Heights, Manhattan, Díaz broke through in the 1990s with a string of memorable film roles. He played gang member Paco de la Vega al Camino Cordoba Jose Cuervo Sanchez Rodriguez Jr. in ‘High School High’, and later described ‘Half Baked’ as a real turning point that helped him start getting noticed.

Now, during an appearance on the ‘McBride Rewind‘ podcast with Josh McBride, Díaz reflected on how narrowly he was cast in those early years. He recalled that his audition for ‘Weeds’, where he played a ruthless yet complex drug dealer, was an easy process, since he had already played so many “thug” roles on shows like ‘Law & Order’ and felt heavily typecast at the time.

The pattern is hard to miss when you look at his résumé. Díaz played a drug runner in 1994’s ‘Fresh’, a weed-dealing stoner in ‘Half Baked’ and drug dealer Guillermo García Gómez across seasons 2 through 6 of ‘Weeds’.

Most strikingly, he said the people around him seemed more comfortable with him playing bad guys and gun-toting drug dealers than gay characters or a drag queen. According to Díaz, his team and those in his life were more nervous about the latter than the former.

That tension came to a head with one pivotal project. Díaz played drag queen La Miranda in Nigel Finch’s ‘Stonewall’, and he has said that his decision to publicly come out as gay followed filming that movie. Roles in ‘Party Girl’ and ‘Stonewall’ helped shift how the industry saw him.

It wasn’t an easy transition behind the scenes. When he told his management he wanted to audition for more complex parts that broke the routine, he said he received pushback over fears it could hurt his career. Ultimately, he made a conscious choice to break the stereotype and pursue projects that showed another side of his talent.

That persistence eventually paid off in a big way. In 2012, Díaz began his main role as Diego “Huck” Muñoz in Shonda Rhimes’ ‘Scandal’, the part he’s still best known for today. He has since returned to that world as co-host of ‘Unpacking the Toolbox’, a ‘Scandal’ rewatch podcast with Katie Lowes.

His career has continued to branch out since. After ‘Scandal’ wrapped in 2018, he joined ABC’s comedy ‘United We Fall’, telling Entertainment Weekly that switching gears back to comedy appealed to him. He later played Sergeant Bill Brewster on ‘Law & Order: Organized Crime’, and in 2017 he was named to Out magazine’s “OUT100” in recognition of his work and visibility.

Not every story from the podcast was heavy. Díaz also revealed that Louise Fletcher, his ‘High School High’ co-star and the Oscar-winning Nurse Ratched from ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, gave him an autographed black-and-white photo of herself in her nurse hat. He called it one of his favorite possessions and said he still has it.

His reflections land at a time when conversations about representation in Hollywood remain as relevant as ever. For Díaz, the lesson seems clear: breaking out of a box sometimes requires stepping away from what everyone around you thinks is safe.

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