Full House (1987-95) was a TGIF sitcom set in an annoyingly gay-free San Francisco. The premise: sportscaster Danny (Bob Saget) loses his wife (don't worry, it's a 1980s death, with no grief). He can't take care of his three daughters on his own, so his friends Joey and Jesse (Dave Coulier, John Stamos) move in to help.
I didn't watch -- in West Hollywood in the 1980s and 1990s, who was home on a Friday night? But I recognize the iconic Full House house, 1709 Broderick Street, about two miles from the Castro, and I know that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson, who played Danny's infant daughter Michelle, became pop culture icons, starring in a string of movies before starting their own fashion company.
If you watched, you may have noticed Blake McIver Ewing, who played Derek, Michelle's "musical" friend and fellow thespian, during Seasons 6-8. From the clips I watched while researching this profile, I gather that he is quite femme. A contemporary blogger references "the blinding supernova of Derek's undeniable gayness," but on the show itself no one ever suspects. Michelle's friend Lisa even asks him to the Big Valentine's Day Dance.
The grown-up Blake's primary interest is music -- his IMDB biography effuses over its "wonderful power to be cohesive, moving, influential, emotive, subdued, deferential, caustic, achingly beautiful, full of character, simplistic, complex and/or virtually any other adjective one can think of." Like overwritten? He has 44 music credits and 15 composing credits on the IMDB, and nine songs available on Apple Music, including the gay anthems "It Gets Better" and "This is Who We Are."
He was recently cast in The Boy from Oz, a musical about the life of bisexual singer/songwriter Peter Allen.
But Blake also has 31 acting credits, beginning with the six-year old Ned, played as a grownup by Gabriel Olds, in Calendar Girl (1993) -- which everybody in West Hollywood went to because of the opportunity to gawk at the backsides of Gabriel and Jason Priestley, but not Jerry O'Connell, darn it.
Other than Derek, Blake is best known for playing Waldo Aloysius Johnston II in the Little Rascals movie (1994). He sabotages the Big Go-Kart Race and steals the girlfriend of preteen Lothario Alfalfa (future homophobe Bug Hall). Don't worry, she dumps him and returns to Alfalfa after discovering that he is a jerk.
What Superman is packing after the break
Otherwise Blake mostly works as a voice artist: Timon & Pumbaa, Tarzan (not voicing Tarzan), Recess, Teacher's Pet, Lloyd in Space, Rocket Power.
Often his characters are gay-coded. For instance, showrunner Craig Bartlett calls Eugene Horowitz in Hey, Arnold "proto-gay": he's into musical theater, decorates his room with unicorns and rainbows, and becomes upset when someone mentions getting with a girl (now, how about showing him with a crush on a boy?)
Blake has stepped in front of the camera twice recently. He plays shrill shopkeeper in A Very Sordid Wedding (2017), a sequel to Sordid Lives (2000), featuring two not-quite-gay-positive sisters planning a gay wedding. Their mild homophobia is offset by a rabidly homophobic preacher, a serial killer, and the character I always hated the most, Brother Boy. In 2000, he was institutionalized, because everyone thought that being gay was a mental illness. In 2000!
Surprisingly, Blake also managed to reprise the role of Derek on a 2019 episode of the Full House sequel, Fuller House, in spite of showrunner Candace Cameron Bure's frequently expressed hatred of LGBT persons. Maybe Derek isn't out.
Blake's social media has a lot of risque and n*de photos, especially butt shots.
You're giving mixed signals, Buddy. Are you a top or a bottom?
But there some bulge and dick pics, too, in case Jimmy Olsen wants to see what's under the cape before Superman goes downtown.
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