For the past few years, a debate has been ongoing about whether straight actors should play gay characters or not. This is a conversation that looks set to be reignited with the upcoming film Queer, starring Daniel Craig. However, one thing people tend to agree on is that it’s not appropriate to cast cis men to play trans women and vice versa. (Squid Game is the latest high-profile show to fall victim to this.)
These are issues that need to be discussed with care, nuance, and tact, so the last thing anyone needed was straight right-wing commentator Piers Morgan steamrolling his way in. He decided to write an article for The Sun about how “saying only gay actors should play gay characters is like saying only serial killers should play a serial killer.”
He used as a springboard some recent comments from actor Rupert Everett, who recently complained that it was “anti-acting” to stop straight actors playing gay roles. (My apologies for the Daily Mail link there.) Everett also said that Scarlett Johansson should have taken the role of a trans man in the film Rub & Tug, which ended up not happening after she dropped out amid backlash. Morgan has some thoughts about this, and because he’s an angry straight white man with a platform, the rest of us have to suffer through them.
“Did it matter that Tom Hanks isn’t gay when he played a gay man in Philadelphia, the first big movie about HIV/AIDS, and did it so well that he won an Oscar, and shone such a massively important and effective global light on the killer disease?” he said, while writing for a newspaper that actively spread AIDS misinformation in the ’80s. “It did to the woke brigade, who’ve since attacked him so much for it that he now says he shouldn’t have accepted the part because there was a lack of authenticity in ‘a straight guy playing a gay guy.'”
Hanks didn’t quite say that though—he told the New York Times in 2022, “Could a straight man do what I did in Philadelphia now? No, and rightly so … One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of that movie is that I was playing a gay man. We’re beyond that now, and I don’t think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy.” There’s never been an indication he felt “attacked” for taking the role.
In fact, there is precious little “attacking” going on anywhere when it comes to this debate, it’s just that people like Morgan can claim there is as long as it gives them an excuse to attack the “woke.” Many gay actors are just fine with straight actors playing gay roles as long as they do so respectfully. Gay actor Joe Locke, for example, recently said, “I wouldn’t want to not be able to play a straight character, so I don’t think it’s fair to stop someone straight—who can do all the research—from playing a gay character. As long as you’re playing a part authentically and with the best intentions—you’re not just playing a stereotype—then go for it.”
In 2021, Neil Patrick Harris said, “There’s something sexy about casting a straight actor to play a gay role if they’re willing to invest a lot into it.” Others disagreed, but it’s important to note that this conversation has largely been respectful—with the rare exception of those who demand actors reveal their sexuality even if they’re not ready to come out, like what happened with Heartstopper’s Kit Connor—until people like Morgan decided to wade into the debate.
It’s also important to note that no one has attacked Daniel Craig for playing gay men in Glass Onion and Queer. In fact, the only person who’s ever attacked Craig is Piers Morgan, who slammed him back in 2018 for … carrying his baby in a baby carrier. Yes, really. He claimed it made the former James Bond “emasculated.” If there’s anyone who should be excluded from this debate and polite society in general, it’s Morgan.
Published: Dec 8, 2024 08:41 am