Actress Debi Mazar (Entourage) discusses her ulterior motive for participating in Dancing With the Stars, sexing up Maksim, and why she dedicated her salsa to the queens in heaven who helped make her the lady she is today.

Advocate:
From her feature film debut as a coke-snorting mistress in 1990’s Goodfellas to her recurring role as publicist Shauna on HBO’s Entourage, Debi Mazar has made a career out of playing strong, sassy women with New York accents as thick as her eye makeup. Now the 45-year-old mother of two is bringing her signature streetwise charm to ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, hoofing it alongside Maksim Chmerkovskiy.

Mazar took a break from rehearsal to tell Advocate.com about her heavenly gay fans and why -- as sexy as Maks is -- she would’ve preferred a female partner.

Advocate.com: Luckily, you have the show’s hottest professional dancer as your partner.

Debi Mazar: With the best butt, I might add. I’m staring at it as we speak. I chose Maksim because I saw a raw sensuality in him that I thought, as a strong woman, maybe I could bring out in him. I knew we could have a great time, but I also needed someone who would make me work hard because I can sometimes be lazy when it comes to physical activity. He’s relentlessly hard on me, and it’s the only way I’ll be able to continue in this. I get bored very easily, so without him I’d probably say, “Let me just rip the other side of my neck and get the fuck off this competition.” He’s such a tough, macho, passionate, sexy brute.

Advocate.com: I’m sure he doubles your gay vote.

Debi Mazar: Yeah, he definitely has his following too. Knowing that I have a huge gay following, I actually tweeted when I first got the offer from Dancing With the Stars, “By the way, I’m thinking about who my partner should be. What do you guys think?” Everyone was like, “Maks! Maks! Maks!” I was like, “OK, well, that’s who I’m going to ask for.”

Advocate.com: DWTS irked me when Lance Bass was a contestant on season 7. I think they missed a great opportunity to give him a same-sex partner.

Debi Mazar: That would’ve been genius. I only wish that I could’ve had Cheryl Burke as a partner, but she got Tom DeLay. She could’ve made me look really smooth, and it would’ve been so sexy. I did pitch a dance with Maksim where we would switch roles so I got to be the man, but the show plays to Middle America, so I can’t even show the fact that I have nipples underneath my leotard.

Advocate.com: Growing up in New York in the late ’60s and ’70s, what was your earliest exposure to gay people?

Debi Mazar: Well, my mother had me at 15 and was divorced [from] my father by the time I was two. After that, we were living with two Puerto Rican queens on the Lower East Side, so I’ve always been in the life. I’ve had gay uncles, lesbian aunties, and, quite frankly, it’s the queens that raised me. I didn’t get to go to ballet class or to acting school, but I did have queens who came to New York from Cuba and introduced me to Reinaldo Arenas. Intellectual gay men turned me into a lady and took me to museums, the theater, fashion shows, and turned me on to all the things I’m interested in. I’ve always been fighting for equality and for finding a cure -- I just did the No H8 campaign -- but who someone fucks is the least interesting thing about a person.

Read full interview here.