TV

How a straight guy and gay guy make the perfect couple

You weren’t the only one kept in the dark about Cyrus Beene’s sexuality on “Scandal.”

Jeff Perry, who plays the series’ Machiavellian White House Chief of Staff, didn’t know his character was gay until the fourth episode.

And neither did his wife, Linda Lowy, the show’s casting director.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh…What!” she shrieked when she read the script, a full 10 days before he did. She had to keep it a secret.

“We had a pact that she would never let me see the script before the rest of the cast,” says Perry. “So, I asked, ‘What’s wrong, honey?’ and she said, ‘Oh, I have to cast a new role.’ ”

The role? White House Correspondent James Novak.

The man who would be in bed with her real-life husband.

Dan Bucatinsky had already played a gay man in the 2001 film, “All Over The Guy,” which he wrote and produced. And he had also already auditioned for “Scandal.” First he tried for US Attorney for the District of Columbia, David Rosen, then for Huck, who is one of Olivia Pope’s Gladiators. (The roles went to Joshua Malina and Guillermo Diaz, respectively.) When he read for Huck, he was in awe of the material.

“It was the most beautiful monologue I had ever read,” says Bucatinsky, 48. “But truthfully, he had been homeless, and I’m like a Bar Mitzvah boy from New York. I’m not Huck.”

As it turned out, he was perfect for the role of Novak. “How’d you like to play my husband’s husband?” Lowy asked him.

Soon Cyrus and James would become one of the show’s most explosive couples — but happier than Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and President Grant (Tony Goldwyn), of course. They even got married.

In this week’s episode, Cyrus uses James in a scheme to keep Vice President Sally Langston (Kate Burton) in line during the president’s re-election campaign. He manipulates him when he notices that the VP’s husband has a wandering eye — and it’s focused on James.

“Cyrus is nothing if not a dog with a bone — a dog with a chew toy,” Bucatinsky says. “He sees right then an opportunity to chew the toy into several thousand pieces.”

Bucatinsky and Perry cut striking figures on the red carpet.

Who does Perry think of, I ask, when he plays Cyrus?

“Dick Cheney,” he says. “And [Donald] Rumsfeld.”

The actors face wildly different challenges in playing their roles. Perry is a straight married man with a daughter, but playing a gay man. Bucatinsky lives with his husband, writer/director Don Roos, and they have two children, Eliza and Jonah.

“I’m a gay dad and writer in real life,” says Bucatinsky “and I am a gay dad writer on the show.”

Born in New York City to Argentinian Jewish parents, Julio and Myriam, Bucatinsky is a partner in “Is or Isn’t Entertainment,” producers of such series as “The Comeback,” “Web Therapy” and “Who Do You Think You Are,” with his fellow Vassar grad, Lisa Kudrow. After a disappointing acting career, he turned to writing, but never gave up his childhood acting dream.

“I used to pray that I could make the desire to be an actor go away, “ he says, “because it was too painful.”

Bucatinsky and Perry are sitting in an office next door to the Sunset-Gower studio soundstage where “Scandal” is filmed. Perry, sipping coffee, is dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with wildly unruly hair. He is a bundle of energy, a 58-year-old character actor who finally got the role of a lifetime.

“I’m big in airports,” he says, grinning.

Bucatinsky wears a baseball cap and glasses. His computer sits on his lap. He recently scored a development deal with Shonda Rhimes to adapt his best-selling parenting book “Does This Baby Make Me look Straight? Confessions of a Gay Dad.” They are writing the pilot.

“If it were 10 years ago and the White House Chief of Staff were gay,” he says. “It would be an episode where he comes out. It would be a big deal. Here it is just a matter of fact.”

Perry, a co-founder of the Steppenwolf Films and Theater Company, with Gary Sinise, John Malkovich and Laurie Metcalf — his first wife — is clearly the industry veteran and mentor here. He got his first big TV break playing Harvey Leek on the Don Johnson CBS series “Nash Bridges.” He had some guest roles on “The West Wing” and “Frasier.” Being married moved him into Rhimes’ acting stable and Perry played Meredith Grey’s father on “Grey’s Anatomy.” The role of Cyrus was several seasons in the future.

“It is so hard. There are so many times when I felt like this must be the bottom of the potato chip bag, I can’t get anywhere,” he says. “I worked nine pilot seasons in between ‘Nash Bridges’ and ‘Scandal’ to no avail.”

At one point during an unguarded moment, Perry moves close to Bucantinsky and put his arm around his friend’s shoulder.

It is genuinely affectionate bonding between two male friends in Hollywood.

“When I came to Los Angeles at 27, I was so closeted and for the first 10 years it was really a barrier to me getting an acting job,” Bucatinsky says. “Twenty-five years ago I didn’t want anyone in the world to know I was gay, and now I am balls-to-the-wall who I am in real life.”

Speaking of balls to the wall — there was that episode last season in which an intense reckoning — between politician and reporter, husband and husband — that required both men to strip.

“That’s the other time I heard my wife scream,” says Perry. Then, she told him only one word: “Naked.”

The actors had 11 days to get in shape.

“I had been working out 3 or 4 days a week at that point,” says Perry. “I thought maybe I could increase that like crazy.” But he quickly gave up on looking buff.

“I just said, ‘I’m going to go Gandolfini.’ ”

Bucatinsky, on the other hand, went berserk: tanning, waxing, a juice fast. “I’ve never done more sit-ups in my life.” he says. “And then I had an epiphany: I’m not going to remove my shirt and suddenly be Brad Pitt.’ ”

Perhaps we are having too much fun, because there is a knock on the door and a show publicist says the guys have to go to work. Walking across the lot, we talk about the show’s impact on their lives.

“It’s heaven,” says Perry.

Bucatinsky, however, takes his cue from his grandmother. “When we would arrive in Argentina she would start crying, ‘Oh, you have to leave so soon.’ ”

“So I figure, it’s not going to last. Twenty-five years from now we are not going to do this anymore.”