For sga, if you want to elaborate on how much you think the actors “knew what they were doing” I’d be interested!
So I don't think they played McShep up actively as a romance or perceived of their characters as gay. But I think they were aware of the shippers and aware of that reading of the characters and did little to dissuade it.
Mostly, I think Joe Flanigan KNEW if he played John the way the script wrote him--resident Cool Guy Ladies Man--he would not be interesting. Joe's performance MAKES John for me. And while that does not mean he consciously decided to play John as a Don't Ask Don't Tell Era gay man, I think he was well aware of the aspects written into the character that had the potential to make him creepy, typical, irritating, etc. And I think he did actively trouble and downplay those aspects, which includes entering thoughtfully into his scenes with the female characters, and, by contrast, with Rodney and other male characters as well. If your character is written as a bit of a womanizer and you very much do not want him to be read as a womanizer, one way to combat that is to play him as a bit gay--or at least, not be afraid of the potential he will come off as gay. And I think that's what Joe did, and that he knew he was doing it: it was important to him John was a good friend to the women in Atlantis and to do that with the script he was given, he pushed certain subtextual aspects of John's character using his acting, and knew those choices would make John potentially come across as gay, and either liked that or didn't care.
With my rewatch, I've been noticing similar intent in David Hewlett. John's character is not as explicitly misogynistic, so acting choices can ultimately override those moments of sexism. But Rodney is, explicitly in text, a misogynist. So, David was tasked with the challenge of playing a main character we, the audience, are supposed to love, who is objectively and openly misogynistic. Actually, there are many textually grating things about Rodney, it must have been a challenge to play him in such a way he still comes across as flawed and complex but ultimately lovable. And again--I don't think David chose to depict Rodney as a gay man suffering from internalized homophobia--but he DID make deliberate choices in his interactions with female characters and male charactesr (and especially John) in order to trouble and complicate the textual misogyny. Rodney's growth from SG-1 and even season 1 of Atlantis to where he is at the end of the series is WRITTEN inconsistently (since the writers were dead set on making Rodney a self insert). But it is ACTED in a beautiful arc. David poured so much love and effort into making Rodney complicated, and like Joe, clearly didn't care if the side effect of that effort also made Rodney seem gay.
In short: the actors did a hell of a job making their characters into far more than what they were written as. I don't think they meant, concretely, to make these characters seem gay and in love, but they WERE troubling and pressing on their misogyny in the script in such a way it was clear they weren't concerned with the possibility these characters could, easily, seem gay and in love.
