Do we like Sean Maher?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record on harm and a good story on coming out, but not much recent public activity to go on, so it stops short of the top.
Sean Maher grew up in a close-knit Irish Catholic family and trained at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He told The Advocate he came out to his family in his first year there, and that his dad quietly slipped him the number of a priest. The family's love held anyway.
The Hollywood chapter was rougher. After he was cast as the lead in Fox's Ryan Caulfield: Year One in 1999, he says he was told he couldn't be a leading man if people thought he was gay. He says his early manager and publicists pushed him to be seen with girls and to hide it. He took that fear on himself for years.
On the harm check, we found nothing. There are no posts or speeches against any group, no conspiracy rabbit holes, and no stints with the culture-war studios. He didn't turn up in faith-film or Daily Wire-type projects, and the searches for anything on trans rights, vaccines or climate came back empty. That is the honest limit: absence of evidence, and he is not a loud political voice.
On the good-person side, searches for lawsuits, convictions or accusations against him found nothing about him. The results were all about other Mahers, mostly Bill. He has been warm about his co-stars and fans in interviews, and in 2013 he spoke about the thrill of playing a first-ever villain in Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing.
The recent news is Firefly coming back as an animated series, with a script written and showrunners Tara Butters and Marc Guggenheim, but still no network. TVLine says the cast is on board, though Maher appears only in a teaser clip and isn't named in the announcement. So watch this space before you start the Simon Tam countdown.