Who should be playing gay roles

Before I get too deep into the topic, I think it is important to recognize how we have only recently gotten to a point where gay/bisexual actors can have careers without putting on a straight image. When Matt Bomer recently talked about having possibility lost a role to due to his sexuality earlier in his career, it was met with skepticism and doubt by many. Because gay/bisexual actors have been getting more opportunities recently, I feel some are forgetting the history of either exclusion or forced secrecy Hollywood had for a long time towards them.

Studios would use tabloids to shut down any rumors of actors being gay/bisexual, and they wouldn’t let any of them live openly or have public relationships. There are resources like Open Secret: Gay Hollywood—1928-2000 which delve into this deeply. We do have iconic actors from the community now. But I think it is important to note that Neil Patrick Harris for example hadn’t come out until 2006, and while Nathan Lane did come out in 1999, he has thanked Robin Williams for protecting him from being outed in 1996.

With that history in consideration, I get the impulse to want more queer roles played by actors from that community. And to a certain extent I think that is something worthy of aiming for. In a panel for Fellow Travelers, the people behind and in front of the camera talked about the joy from having a mostly queer crew leading a story like that one. But I also think Melissa McCarthy did fantastic in Can You Ever Forgive Me, so it would be hypocritical for me to support that as a hard and fast rule.

To be clear, I think having more gay/lesbian actors getting to play queer roles is a good thing I agree with. But trying to enforce this as a requirement has led to some forced outings and uncomfortable questioning. Kit Harrington talked about how he felt forced to come out sooner than he wanted due to rampant speculation and questioning. I don’t think this is a healthy way to engage with art and the people creating it. So, for me, what I support is equality of opportunity. Actors from the community should get chances to audition like straight ones, for all sorts of roles. Valorie Curry, the lesbian actress who plays Firecracker from The Boys talked about relishing the opportunity to play a bigoted villain.

I think movies and narrative television are an art, not a science.  When art is done by empathetic people, empathetic results will follow. I believe artistic mediums are improved when people with varied experiences can enter it, and that can be accomplished without strict rules that can lead to invasive questioning/forced outings. The film industry can help with the employment discrimination sometimes faced by LGBT people (especially for those dealing with multiple oppression’s at once) but by itself cannot change the whole of society by itself. And I think forcing it to can lead to taking away from the artistry of it all.