Actor Paul Iacono, star of MTV’s The Hard Times of RJ Berger, has come out of the closet in an interview with the Village Voice‘s Michael Musto.

Musto asks the 23-year-old actor if he’s openly gay now, and he responds:

“Yes. I’m rolling with the punches here. I was asked if I was comfortable doing gay press. I said, ‘Of course.’ I didn’t think I’d be coming out. But why not now? I think it’s the right time to say something. It’s not about me, it’s about change and the work.”

Iacono also discusses his MTV show Kenzie’s Scale (a play on the Kinsey Scale, we assume), in which he plays gay. He says:

I play Cole, Kenzie’s boyfriend. It’s about a high school sweetheart couple who move to New York for college. He has this gay awakening when they get there. So they continue living together more as friends than lovers. It’s like a radical young Will & Grace. It explores the sexual spectrum from a millennial, ambiguous generation [point of view]. I believe that in 100 years, none of us will be having to identify ourselves as gay, straight, bi, or otherwise. Sexuality will be a more fluid thing. The show is a progressive outlet of that idea… The whole reason we came up with Kenzie’s Scale is to give young gays characters to look up to. It’s great that we have Chris Colfer, but we need more characters. I was so moved by your comment on Facebook that ‘If I’d grown up with gay TV icons that were out, I’d have been so much better off.’ I didn’t have much to look up to as a kid. I had to search to find like-minded images. I’m happy to be that person so kids won’t have to grow up and be afraid of their sexuality and this won’t be an issue.

RJ Berger—from out co-producer Seth Grahame-Smith—was cancelled last year, but we’re looking forward to Kenzie’s Scale. Its placement on MTV, along with Dan Savage’s new Savage U, begs the question: now that Logo is not featuring all-gay programming, will the LGBT-interest stuff become more visible on its corporate sisters, MTV and VH1?

Photo: Kgarrett, MTV