Marc St. James (Michael Urie)

Michael Urie as Marc St. James

Background

Marc, who hails from Schenectady, New York is the openly gay personal assistant of Wilhelmina Slater, the creative editor at MODE magazine. He is very loyal to Wilhelmina and so far he will do whatever it will take to help his boss succeed in her goal to become the magazine's editor by conspiring with both his boss and magazine receptionist Amanda to sabotage the two people responsible for costing Wilhelmina the top job, and in particular, ruin the 'beauty' of the magazine's workplace: Daniel Meade and Betty Suarez, respectively. Despite his semi-scheming and his efforts to detour the two, Marc has a record in failing in those efforts and at times finds himself at the mercy of his boss' wrath, where she had threatened to replace him with any other "curly haired, effeminate sycophant", five of whom she has on speed dial.

Although he has made no secret that he is openly gay as evident by his flamboyant behavior and his refusal to touch an attractive female, he has not told his family, who thinks he is straight and has a girlfriend who lives in Canada.

Interestingly enough, his secret of keeping his sexual orientation hidden from his family would no longer stay hidden. When Marc's mother came to visit him for a cat show, Marc uses Betty as a fake girlfriend to cover up his sexuality. However, when she sees the dysfunctional nature of Betty's family while having dinner and begins to speak harshly about the craziness of the Suarez family, Marc surprisingly talks back to her and defends Betty and her family. He eventually confesses that Betty isn't his girlfriend and comes out to her. Unfortunately, Marc's mother rejects him, and leaves for home.

Marc is also one of three people who knows about Fey Sommers' secret "Love Dungeon", the other two being Amanda and Christina.

Other traits and interests

• He suffers from asthma attacks whenever there is a crisis. He also carries around with him a sparkled-designed inhaler.
• At home he has a pet named Schmoopy, but there is no description on what type of species this animal is.
• When he is not around doing Wilhelmina's bidding, he makes extra money from tipping off the retail chain Eternal 18 (a parody of Forever 21) by spying on what will be the latest must-have items during Fashion Week.
• His favorite band is N*Sync and his favorite musical is High School Musical.

Connections

• Wilhelmina Slater - Creative Editor at MODE; Wilhelmina will usually confidently hand out orders to Marc, especially when it comes dealing with Daniel and Betty. When Marc accidentally stumbles onto Wilhelmina's plans to take over Meade Publications, he turns that around by forcing Wilhelmina into buying his silence with financial security and a new Hummer H2 in order to keep her secret from leaking out. In a brief moment of resigned camaraderie with Christina, however, Marc hinted that Wilhemina's underhanded methods had worn him down over time.
• Betty Suarez - Assistant to the Editor at MODE; He constantly mocks Betty (he has captured her screwups on cellphone and then proclaims "I think I just found my new screensaver!" after downloading it, and even dressed up as her for Halloween in which he almost got a raise from Wilhelmina, who then quickly changed her mind after saying that she can barely stand seeing the "real" one), as long as he doesn't endure Betty's wrath since she has threatened him with a Queens-style beating. She has also threatened Marc that she'll expose his personal web page (that contains revealing images of himself) after she saw his screensaver shrine to Betty and her mishaps; he deleted them immediately. Betty even once duped Marc into owing her a favor by giving him the coveted Gucci bag he wanted from the MODE closet. It actually turned out to be a knock-off and Marc wouldn't have admitted it was fake because it would have meant Betty tricked him. Recently, however, he hinted that he likes Betty more than he lets on, telling her "you'll always be my little chimichanga."
• Justin Suarez - Betty's nephew; When Justin came to her workplace Marc seemed to like Justin, even giving him advice on dealing with bullies and complimenting him on his outfits.
• Amanda Tanen - Receptionist at MODE; a loyal ally; they share a dislike for Betty and enjoy humiliating her. In one episode Marc and Amanda were willing to work with Betty in an attempt to keep their jobs, even at the cost of lying to Wilhelmina, which got worse after he and Amanda make a prank call to the mystery woman while they were in Wilhelmina's office, but he used that to his advantage by telling Amanda that it will cost her after Wilhelmina saw her text message that pinned him as the culprit. In "Don't Ask Don't Tell" it was revealed that Marc has pretended in the past that Amanda was his girlfirend in order to fool his mother when she visited him. Marc later told his mother he had broken up with Amanda because of her sex and drug addictions.
• Christina McKinney - Seamstress at MODE; Christina has a love-hate rivalry with Marc, with whom she constantly bickers, mostly because of her work. In the tenth episode she told "Santa Claus" that she wishes that Marc had "...Courage" because she knows how cowardly Marc is, especially concerning Wilhelmina. They formed a friendly truce during the fifteenth episode ("Derailed") when Christina needed help in designing an Oscar-worthy dress in one night, only to have the opportunity destroyed by a manipulative Wilhemina.

Trivia

• The idea for Marc to come out to his mother was both Urie and co-star America Ferrera's idea.
• Marc's character is equivalent to Hugo Lombardi.

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