Lee Swift of Dallas competes in Season 2 of “The Circle”on Netflix

Tammye Nash | Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com

Is anybody really who they say they are anymore? And just how much do our preconceived notions of what a person is like — based purely on what we think we know about their gender or orientation or race or age — affect how we treat and/or react to that person?

These are the questions at the heart of the reality TV competition on Netflix called The Circle. And Dallasite Lee Swift is one of the contestants hoping to help answer those questions this time around.

The first four episodes of the second season of The Circle dropped on Wednesday, April 14, and four new episodes will drop each Wednesday until the finale on May 5.

The premise of the show is that eight contestants move into the same apartment building and “flirt, befriend and catfish their way” to the title of Top Influencer and a $100,000 cash prize. But they never actually meet in person, interacting only through a social media app called The Circle. Which means they can choose to be whoever they want to be.

Lee, in reality, is a 58-year-old gay man from Dallas. But to the other seven folks in The Circle, he is a 24-year-old gay man named River. But how did a 58-year-old man end up in The Circle in the first place?

“My niece and nephew both also live in Dallas, and while we are all in lockdown and couldn’t see each other in person, we started zooming and watching [the first season of The Circle] together. And I became a big fan. It was mainly a way for me to connect with my niece and my nephew.

And then in June last year, just as a lark, I went online and applied to be a contestant.”

Lee said he filled out all the necessary paperwork then sent in a video introducing himself. Next thing he knew, he was getting the call that he had made the cut. At the end of September, after testing negative for COVID, “I flew out to start shooting. They quarantined me for two weeks, doing COVID tests every couple of days. They were very very cautious.”

Then the game began.

“Looking at the timeline now, I can say yeah, we only filmed about two weeks,” Lee said. “But you are on 24/7; it sure didn’t feel like it was that quick.”

Given the chance to be anybody he wanted, Lee said, he decided to play the game as a “catfish,” someone who isn’t who they claim to be. “I am a writer,” he explained. “I have written under several pen names, and I thought, I have created characters before, I can do that now. So I did: I created a character, and I played the game as that character. It was a fascinating and, really, very emotional experience.”

Lee said that, in real life, he grew up in a small West Texas town in the 1970s and ’80s, at a time when coming out as gay was a very difficult and scary experience. “When I came out,” he said, “it was at a time when the police would harass you, when you could lose everything.”

But on The Circle, playing the game as 24-year-old River, he had the chance to come out all over again, and “it was really kind of neat to experience coming out in 2021, in a whole new environment.” And the experience, he said, has left him feeling “very excited about our young people these days. My cast-mates were so open-minded. They don’t get bogged down with all the gender and sexual orientation issues. There wasn’t the homophobia I grew up with. People talk a lot about the downside of social media, but I see it as such a powerful tool for reaching out to the young people in our community, letting them know they aren’t alone.”

Even though he played the game as a “catfish,” Lee said he remained “legitimate in who I am throughout. Our beautiful rainbow comes in all ages and shapes and sizes and genders and creeds, and I think I helped people see that.

“I just hope I make Dallas proud. My husband, Stephen, and I have been together 33 years now, and I hope I make him proud,” Lee continued.

“Stephen told me, ‘Whatever you do, don’t cry.’ But I cried anyway. Still, whatever I did, if it can help even one young person who is struggling and who feels alone, if it can help make them know there is hope, and there is happiness, then I am happy with that.”