In this story this soap actorrefused to go along with having his character turn gay and begin kissing men. Some are asserting that he’s anti-gay for doing this, but he did not make antii-gay statements, all he did was refuse to kiss a man, and now he is unemployed.
So is he anti-gay or not?
Well, why did he refuse? If he’s an actor, he has to pretend to be people/things he’s not really, that’s what acting is about.
I can’t think of a legitimate (ie not anti-gay) reason to refuse in this context. If he’s too squicked out by the prospect, he should find another occupation where he won’t be asked to do anything he wouldn’t do in real life.
From the second link, it sounds like there were bigger issues involved than just refusing to kiss another actor. Maybe he wasn’t being ‘anti-gay’ - maybe he refused for other reasons.
In general, refusing to kiss someone who was your character’s love interest is surely a bit of a big deal in acting, I would have thought. It’s not as if anyone expects every actor to fancy the person they’re kissing.
I could imagine that, maybe, the actor or his agent thought ‘oh no! now I’ll be known as the actor who had a same-sex kiss!’ but would that be such a bad thing these days?
If I play a murderer in a movie, I don’t have to actually kill someone. If I play a prostitute, I don’t have to actually have penetrative intercourse with my fellow actors. Acting almost never asks you to do something you wouldn’t be comfortable doing in public in real life. They just fake it.
So really the question is whether he was unwilling to fake a kiss (for instance, where all you could see was the back of his head), or if they wanted a full on, obvious tongue action shot.
I’d say not automatically anti-gay, albeit a bit childish to give up a sweet acting gig over something that squicks you out. The second article says he didn’t like the “dark direction” his character was taking and so I have to wonder if just his character turning gay is a “dark direction.” That shows a less than enlightened attitude.
I don’t like the assertion that a person is anti-gay because they make a choice about what they do with their own body. I wouldn’t think a person was anti-sex because they refused to shoot a graphic sex scene, so why should someone be labeled as homophobic for making a decision about who they choose to kiss? Homophobia is hating that other people prefer the same sex. Choosing to abstain from the same sex yourself is having control over your body.
That said, it may not be the most professional attitude for an actor to refuse a scene because it makes them feel a little icky. But mild unprofessionalism is not homophobia.
On the face of it, ISTM that he’s not motivated to keep his gig.
Character “turns gay”? What’s that about?
I kinda see your point, because I can understand actors being a lot more squicked out by kissing someone they don’t fancy if it involves tongues, rather than the smearing-over-the-cheek fake kisses they used to do and still do now and then. Also, I could understand a straight actor needing a bit more preperation for that kiss than for straight kisses - more than just ‘hey, Jason, you’re going to tongue Mike in this next scene.’
Still - kissing someone is part of the job. It’s a soap. His contract might well say ‘no full-frontal nudity,’ but it wouldn’t say ‘no tongue kissing,’ or he wouldn’t have got the job.
Exactly - it could mean that he didn’t actually walk out over the gay kiss at all.
I like to give the benefit of the doubt and generally assume that disputes like this generally come from personal disagreements or arguments about money or whatever, rather than not wanting to pretend to fancy a man.
My God, though, that actor’s Myspace is pretentious! Doesn’t mean he’s anti-gay or anything but man, he comes across as a fifteen-year-old who’s just discovered poetry and thinks they know the meaning of life.
*
Music: turns emotion into sound: humankind’s first manipulation of the invisible. “You are the music while the music lasts.” T.S. Eliot.*
:smack:
No. Definitely not. Simply because a male actor refuses to kiss a man doesn’t mean he’s anti-gay. It’s possible that he **is **homophobic, but this is not evidence of such.
The term ‘anti-gay’ is so widely definable as to be almost pointless.
Acting is at it’s core playing make-believe. The best actors are the ones who can make-believe anything 100% convincingly. If the guy didn’t want to do the scene because he was overly concerned about being perceived as being maybe homosexual in real life or as overly supporting gay rights, I’d say that would qualify as being pretty ‘anti-gay’.
But if it was only because he personally couldn’t commit to the part because he’s unable to fake that small level of intimacy with another male actor then I’d say no, he’s not being ‘anti-gay’. He is however, being a very poor actor. Acting is not easy, and kissing another dude is just par for the course if you’re even remotely serious.
Anyone remember how $20 million-club member Will Smith did exactly this when making Six Degrees of Separation?
Well, he’s either anti-homosexual, extremely uptight, or just a downright fool. In this climate? Where soaps are gasping for air and doing all they can to dump as many of their non-essential cast members as possible? Brilliant, dude.
I can’t imagine a soap actor who wants to stay in the business being stupid enough to risk a breach of contract for just being a little squicked out. Daytime dramas are notoriously tight with their contracts, and you don’t get to be picky about your character’s foibles unless you’re Tony Geary or Kim Zimmer (i.e. Luke from General Hospital and Reva from Guiding Light – their shows’ biggest stars.
Not to mention, what kind of idiot quits over “a dark turn for his character”? Dark turns are great for actors. On soaps or any continuing series, that’s your ticket to a juicy storyline! The best soap characters have all gone through some darker, more angsty periods, at least those played by actors who could handle it.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s a doof, a 'phobe, or a short-sighted chicken. Good luck to him after he gets a rep for being difficult.
I can’t cite, but I remember him later saying that he regretted this - not refusing to do the scene, but taking the role if he wasn’t going to go in 100%. The difference between Will Smith and this soap actor is that Will knew from the getgo that he was playing a gay character. This actor did not know that he was taking a role that would require him to kiss men. And a man refusing to kiss men is NOT anti gay.
Would it be anti-straight if Rupert Everet didn’t want to have a make out scene with a woman?
There was an episodeof Star Trek where Dax briefly entered into a same sex relationship. (They had been married in a previos life, when thety were opposite sexes)Terry Farrel reputedly was very uncomfortable about filming the scenes where she had to kiss the other woman.
I know that, in a lot of places, a male actor being able to kiss a guy is considered the norm. I would think soap operas would qualify in that arena nowadays.
Still, I don’t think refusing to kiss a guy is grounds for calling someone anti-gay. It shows a lack of comfort playing something you are not, sure, but only in a certain area. But, then again, soap opera actors are notoriously bad.
I would only think they would kick him out if the not kissing another guy was the last straw. It sounds like the guy had serious problems with the direction his character was going, so he likely refused to do other things as well.
I thought that Will Smith did kiss a guy in Six Degrees? I just saw it on youtube.
I think they wanted him to take it further. I don’t remember where I read this - it was years ago - but if anyone else could confirm…?
It depends on the context - like it does with this soap actor.
If he refused just because the person he was kissing was straight, then yeah, I’d wonder just why he thought pretending to kiss someone of the opposite sex was so distasteful. If it came out (heh) that Rupert Everet were suddenly refusing to kiss women in films, then it would be news.
You have to look at it from a standpoint like this:
The actor took the role expecting one thing and it was changed on him.
Like the musical Hair has a nude scene. Supposing you were cast in the show and have no problem with nudity but you personally wouldn’t do it. And supposing your role in Hair didn’t call for you to appear naked on stage. Then supposing the director changes the script so your character has to get naked.
If it’s something you don’t want to do, you have to make a choice, whether it’s acting or any other thing your boss in any other line of work, would want you to do.
If you don’t like it, either suck it up and toe the mark or quit. It’s painfully simple.
Does it make you anti-gay. Not necessarily.
The thing is like everything else in life, it’s not black and white of an issue. There are huge gray areas.
As a gay male, I can say in today’s world few people seem to be bothered by my being gay, so long as I am not doing anything about being gay, while they are around.
I’d say that for my personal life, too.
For my life as a parent and a teacher, not so much. People are really bothered then.
If I were an actor, though, I’d accept that I’d have to sometimes pretend to kiss people I didn’t fancy. I’d know that some of my co-workers would be gay. Surely you’d have to accept that the two would sometimes collide? Unless you had some issue about seeming gay when you had built up an image which was against that (and this is a minor soap actor, so, no), why would you be that bothered?
I still bet that his walkout wasn’t just about the potential gay kiss.
They used a double.
I agree it sounds like, in this case, there may have been other factors. Still, I think that if you want to be an actor, you have to be prepared to do things that make you uncomfortable. Being an actor also usually means not having a say in what your character does and how it develops (especially at this level).
A man in real life not wanting to kiss another man is hardly anti-gay. But this seems like the same situation as a ‘sex scene’ would be for an actor, if he wasn’t attracted to his partner. Actors in high school are told to get over this sort of thing.