This is why Will Smith not being able to do it was a pretty big deal. The director was rather pissed, and rightly so. Smith was just starting his acting career and here he was not being able to do something that every wannabe actor nowadays will be asked to do in acting class!
There have pretty much always been RUMORS that Will Smith was in the closet (ex-wife’s uncle, etc.). I wonder if he refused to do it because that would add fuel to that fire.
As for the OP, I don’t see this as necessarily anti-gay, but just another aspect of the lingering effects of society’s squickiness in general with thoughts about what gay intimacy and sex entail.
Can’t fault the man for that really but, as an actor and one in a field where there’s always hundred lined up to take your place, it does seem kind of dumb not to just suck it up and just do it.
Are there ever women who make a big deal out of stuff like this? Same sex kiss, I mean. Or is it more than most actresses make a huge deal out of getting naked?
If he refused to kiss an African-American woman, does that make him a racist?
If he refused to kiss a Jewish woman, does that make him a Jew-hater?
Yes, yes, and to the OP, yes. We’re talking about a kiss here, not hot gay sex.
I disagree. What makes a kiss acceptable but not hot gay sex? Why draw the line just after kissing? Your argument would work for any objection beyond kissing as well. For myself, and most other men I know, kissing another man is more than just being a little squicked out. It’s considered very distasteful and majorly disgusting. Is this different in the US?
In my opinion that doesn’t make one anti-gay or homophobic. Refusing one’s character to be gay at all might be so, but demanding real kissing without faking it (by not actually kissing and just implying it to the viewers through use of camera angles or lighting) seems to be asking way too much from a straight man unless it has previously been agreed on in a contract.
1993 wasn’t nowadays. I don’t think you ever see Tom Hanks’ lips touch Antonio Banderas’ in Philadelphia, and Hanks is still getting kudos for his “brave” portrayal of a gay man.
Also, as a wannabe actor who has taken way too many acting classes, I can say I have never been told to kiss a student of the same sex. In my experience, students are generally not told to kiss anyone in class exercises. In fact, it’s usually understood that you don’t kiss people unless you’re sure it’s OK with them.
ETA: I’ll kiss whomever they tell me to for a steady gig on a soap opera.
If an actor took a role that he knew up front was gay, then he should expect that kissing another man is likely to be part of that role, and if he was uncomfortable with that, he shouldn’t have taken the role in the first place.
Here, though, the character was apparently originally straight, and the actor had no indication that he’d be going gay later in the series. Undoubtedly, some actors would go along with it anyway, but different people have different comfort zones, and I find it hard to fault the actor here.
It seems analogous to the situation with nudity, to me: Some actresses refuse to do nude scenes, and that’s their prerogative. Such actresses should not accept roles where they play a stripper, since you can’t really play a stripper well without doing nude scenes. But if an actress were already playing a character when the writers decided she should become a stripper, the actress would be right to object.
Side note: I was in play that was a takeoff on Gone With The Wind, called Gone With The Blend (all the actors were black).
There was a scene where I (I’m gay) had to force myself on and kiss Harlot on the mouth.
The difficult part was not the kiss, but the slap she gives me afterward. She never could get the understanding that is was not supposed to be a real slap.*
- As another character says in a typo’d line that the director decided to keep, “I felt like I been slappen into hell!”
I see it as becoming a massage therapist. You get your license, open up shop and an obese person walks in, and you’re suddently all “whoa! What I meant by massage therapist is 'hot chicks only!”
Not that that makes a person anti-fat, but people need to consider what they’re chosen career field might entail. If you can’t stand blood, maybe you don’t really want to be a nurse.
I think it’s within an actor’s purview to decide which roles and scenes may hold back his career. Things that worked well for Jake Gyllenhaal didn’t work so well for Ned Beatty.
The link says,
not due to his believing it would hold back his career.
I’m thinking Ned Beatty’s career turned out fine, at least according to imdb.
There are a lot of people in this thread arguing some variant of the point that actors should be prepared to do things they themselves wouldn’t normally do, because, hey, it’s part of the job.
Okay, for the sake of argument, point granted. You have successfully shown that the guy is a bad actor. Now, please complete the logic chain from “bad actor” to “anti-gay”, because I’m not seeing it.
I agree with this. Lots of actors would kill for a role in a soap opera. Heck, I’ll bet that a lot of them would submit to the casting couch for the big break.
According to that link, the actor who took over the role says, “I get to indulge in some interesting, perverse, warped scenarios,” so I suspect there’s more than a simple romantic kiss involved here.
Well, he’s supposed to kiss Yani Gellman. That doesn’t strike me as all that gross, gay or straight. Here’s a better pic and more dish.
Really though, we’re talking The Young & The Restless. Just how awful could it be? If nothing else he sounds like a prima donna who hopefully already has another job lined up.
It’s possible I guess that he’s not anti-gay, but was simply genuinely surprised that an acting gig in a daytime soap entailed being asked to pretend-kiss someone he wasn’t attracted to. But he’d have to be pretty damn dense.
Yes, everyone please check out his song:
“Again, the patient merit rouses
And warns that though we keep to foot
This path outstretched beyond the curve
Returns, so here should stay we put.”
…so here should stay we put? “here should stay we put”!?
Yoda: What the hell meant that?
They didn’t use a double. Will Smith just put his face in front of Anthony Michael Hall’s (the camera is behind Smith), and a kiss was dubbed in later.
I think it would be funny if Vanity Fair did one of those movie “alumni reunion” photos they’re famous for, except this time, Hall would be swooning in Smith’s arms, getting a big on-camera smooch.
Why did I know, almost unconsciously, when reading the thread title, that when I looked to see who the OP was, I’d see the name astro? Why was I so viscerally sure of this?