Playing It Straight: For Queer Roles, Should an Actor’s Sexuality Matter?
After his horny interval drama Mary & George premiered within the spring, Nicholas Galitzine determined to lastly converse his reality. The London native had made a reputation taking over risqué queer materials, enjoying a closeted bisexual teenager in 2020’s The Craft: Legacy earlier than breaking out within the homosexual romance Pink, White & Royal Blue final yr. In Mary & George he superior up the monarchy and seduced an precise king. Now Galitzine was coming into his web heartthrob period—he’d be wooing Anne Hathaway in The Concept of You shortly after Mary & George—and the time had come for him to come back out, 2024-style. “I identify as a straight man, but I have been a part of some incredible queer stories,” he advised British GQ.“I felt a sense of uncertainty sometimes about whether I’m taking up someone’s space, and perhaps guilt.”
The query of who will get to play what function will get trickier with each viral headline. Earlier than social media, the subject wasn’t practically as controversial, however over the previous decade there’s been stress on Hollywood to reckon with its dismal monitor file of embracing LGBTQ+ actors. In 2018 Darren Criss gained an Emmy for taking part in a homosexual serial killer in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, then vowed to cease enjoying queer characters: “I want to make sure I won’t be another straight boy taking a gay man’s role.” This previous June, Sean Penn took subject with the altering local weather, telling The New York Occasions that he wouldn’t be allowed to play homosexual trailblazer Harvey Milk as we speak, regardless of profitable an Oscar for 2008’s Milk: “It’s a time of tremendous overreach. It’s a timid and artless policy toward the human imagination.”
That’s a bit inflammatory, perhaps, for a matter that’s hardly settled, even throughout the queer group. Neil Patrick Harris, finest identified for taking part in a straight bachelor on How I Met Your Mom, just lately stated, “I think there’s something sexy about casting a straight actor to play a gay role, if they’re willing to invest a lot into it.” However Billy Eichner has argued LGBTQ+ actors haven’t had the identical alternatives as straight actors and urged the business to “correct that imbalance.” And whereas the (comparatively) elder statesmen have talked nuances, dynamic straight actors like Galitzine have damaged out enjoying LGBTQ+ males. Even for those who don’t love the thought of straight performers making their queer counterparts’ careers much more difficult, you additionally may not love the thought of by no means seeing Timothée Chalamet in Name Me by Your Title, Barry Keoghan in Saltburn, Paul Mescal in All of Us Strangers, or Josh O’Connor in God’s Personal Nation and Challengers.
Male film stardom has developed as a result of youthful audiences are extra accustomed to fluidity—and since the actors themselves are extra snug within the liminal area between labels. It’s fairly a leap after a century of completely hetero Hollywood heroes, when popping out as homosexual was a profession ender. Rock Hudson emerged as a matinee idol whereas main a secret homosexual life and was solely outed within the press simply earlier than he died of AIDS in 1985. Not way back the veteran TV star Richard Chamberlain stated, “I thought…being gay would be a disaster for me careerwise,” so he didn’t publicly come out till 2003, when he was 70. Matt Bomer just lately claimed he was the best choice to play Superman in a blockbuster some 20 years in the past and that he misplaced the gig after being outed.
The ugly reality, after all, is that straight actors discovered nice success enjoying homosexual roles the entire time. Since 2002 greater than 40 performers have been nominated for Oscars for portraying queer folks—but this yr, Colman Domingo (Rustin) turned the primary out homosexual man ever to obtain a nod for performing in that very same interval. That’s the imbalance Eichner was referring to. With a couple of exceptions proving the rule, Hollywood hasn’t made significant area for LGBTQ+ artists. Actors who got here out way back, like Domingo and Andrew Scott, are solely now hovering after many years within the enterprise.
For years now, I’ve been talking with actors and activists navigating the murky territory of genuine casting, which most of them acknowledge continues to be a minefield. If you happen to’re in search of a hard-and-fast rule, there’s actually just one: The parents at GLAAD and different LGBTQ+ organizations have advised me that cisgender actors enjoying transgender characters is akin to blackface and basically forbidden. Scarlett Johansson found this in 2018 when she was solid as a trans man within the movie Rub & Tug and needed to drop out following backlash. Cis males who’ve performed trans folks, together with Bomer and Eddie Redmayne, have since apologized: Now that they’re higher educated on the topic, they are saying they wouldn’t take these roles once more.
Josh O’Connor, Timothée Chalamet, Paul Mescal, and others have been a part of SUBTLE, STEAMY LGBTQ+ tales—and the answer is to not boot them OUT OF THE TENT.
Other than that crimson line, folks in Hollywood level out that the essence of an actor’s job is to play every part and something exterior of themselves with conviction and empathy. We’ve all seen the greats do it, and we’ve all felt their influence. I grew up watching Six Ft Beneath and The Wire—sure, too younger—and located super which means within the performances of homosexual characters by their respective straight stars, Michael C. Corridor and the late Michael Ok. Williams, as I got here into my very own sexuality. I wouldn’t commerce these actors for anybody. As a youngster, I didn’t know they have been straight, nor did I care. I’m certain that’s precisely what they most well-liked. Actors yearn to be mysterious. You’ve heard it many instances: The much less we learn about them, the extra they’ll disappear into their work. However as illustration has gotten the eye it deserves, private questions have inevitably adopted.
Some established actors now we have purpose to think about as straight have pushed again on labels solely. They’re defending their proper to shape-shift—Daniel Day-Lewis really can transfer extra than simply his left foot—however they’re additionally stating that none of us is aware of the complete content material of their histories and needs anyway. “While my lived experience is very far from Phil Burbank’s, that’s not to say that all of it is,” Benedict Cumberbatch as soon as advised me of enjoying a homosexual cowboy in The Energy of the Canine. “But that’s where we get into the realm of my privacy.” Earlier this yr I requested Tom Hollander, who performed a homosexual trickster in The White Lotus and Truman Capote within the new season of Feud, about his personal representational dilemma. “People keep asking me to do it because apparently when I play these [gay] characters, it’s believable,” he stated. “My own sexuality is sufficiently liberal to have encompassed many different experiences, which are not anyone’s business.” Cate Blanchett, who’s obtained Oscar nominations for taking part in lesbian girls in Carol and Tár, advised me final yr, “I have to really listen very hard when people have an issue with it—I just don’t understand the language they’re speaking.”
Truthful sufficient, however younger queer Hollywood stays, just like the generations earlier than it, at a definite drawback. All the boys in The Hollywood Reporter’s “New A-List” this yr have been straight and white, together with Mescal and Chalamet. They’re actually terrific actors who’ve been a part of delicate, steamy LGBTQ+ tales—and the answer is to not boot them out of the tent. The answer is to have fun their work whereas additionally confronting the truth that brash queerness stays a distinct segment and an impediment to leading-man-dom, and to place an finish to that. Take into account Rupert Everett’s provocative interview with The Guardian from greater than a decade in the past, during which he cited his countrymen Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. “If I’d been straight? I’d be doing what Colin and Hugh do, I suppose,” he stated. Galitzine and Mescal could also be freer to kiss males in movies and TV exhibits, however Hollywood nonetheless has to deal with the suspicion that one purpose it’s simpler is that they’re straight.