Is It Unforgivable to Question Whether a Gay Actor Is Too Femme for a Role?

Cafe Society
1

This is really a pretty old story but I never saw the matter discussed here, so I’m starting a thread now.

It all began with the casting of Sean Hayes in a leading role in the recent Broadway revival of Bacharach & David’s Promises, Promises. A Newsweek critic named Ramin Setoodeh wrote a piece saying that Hayes, a gay actor best known for playing the flamboyantly effeminate Jack on the sitcom Will and Grace, was all wrong for the part, and completely implausible as a straight character in love with Kristin Chenoweth.

Ramin Setoodeh (who is a gay male of Iranian descent, if that makes any difference) took a lot of heat for his comments, and was lambasted both by Ms. Chenoweth and a lot of prominent gays in show business.

Now, I have only seen Sean Hayes in Will and Grace and in that made-for-TV movie about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (I hated the former, but thought Hayes was very good as Jerry Lewis), so I’m not qualified to say whether he was good in ***Promises, Promises ***or whether he has the chops as an actor to play a wide range of roles beyond the stereotypical queen.

But let’s set sexuality aside a moment. Can almost everyone agree that, while some actors surprise us by being very good in roles we never thought they could pull off, many other actors are laughably bad when they try to stretch?

Haven’t we all looked at elderly actors cast in romantic roles opposite young starlets, and scoffed, “We’re supposed to believe SHE’D fall for HIM???”

Haven’t we all seen short, wimpy actors in action roles, and laughed, “We’re supposed to believe HE’D win a fight?”

Haven’t we all jeered and hooted at sci-fi movies or James Bond flicks in which a 21 year old silicon-filled bimbo was cast as a brilliant nuclear physicist?

And haven’t we all seen capable actors who’ve been stereotyped to the point where we laugh when they try to branch out and do something different? Even if Ed O’Neill were capable of playing King Lear, wouldn’t audiences roll on the floors if they saw Al Bundy doing a soliloquy?

I ask, then, is it automatically homophobic or improper to wonder if a given gay actor or actress can give a plausible performance in some types of roles?
Up front, I DON’T have this problem with all (or even most) gay actors (to use one example, Ian McKellen’s sexuality never affected my opinion of Gandalf or Magneto). There are many gay actors or actresses I could readily buy in straight romantic roles (or at least suspend disbelief for). A guy as handsome and funny as Rupert Everett could easily pull off a romantic comedy as a straight guy, in my opinion. But Ellen DeGeneres was never believable for even a second in ***Mr. Wrong, ***because it was never remotely plausible to me that she’d marry a man. I could never, ever buy Harvey Fierstein in a romantic role opposite a woman, either.

I’m sure Sean Hayes isn’t REALLY as effeminate as “Jack” was. MAYBE he was absolutely wonderful in his role in Promises, Promises, and was ideally cast as Kristin Chenoweth’s love. But is it wrong for a casting director (or an audience) to think, “Sorry, NOBODY could believe you in this role”?
Did Ramin Setoodeh cross some line in what he said, or might he have had a point? is it even acceptable to raise this issue?

2

I think it depends on whether they can, well, act. Harvey Fierstein is a good example, because as funny as he is, he doesn’t act. He just plays himself. We mocked whatsherface as a nuclear scientist in the Bond movie, but again, she couldn’t act.

I don’t think I’ve seen Sean Hayes in anything but Will and Grace, but I have no reason to think that he can’t play the part of a straight guy. If it turns out that he can’t, well, the director is free to let him go.

I agree that it’s not automatically homophobic. I do think that you ought to give an actor a chance to convince you before judging them incapable of pulling off the part.

3

Whether a given actor can be convincing in a given part should be based on how they perform that part, not how they payaed a previous part. I think your essayist is off base here.

Of course, when I first saw “Master and Commander” I said to The Wife “Pippin’s steering the boat” although I am quite certain the actor is not really a Hobbit.

4

Questioning whether he is too effeminate for the role because he’s gay would be bad, but there’s nothing wrong with questioning whether he is too effeminate for the role because he’s Sean Hayes.

5

If you cast Ian McKellen in a Shakespearean role, you’ll get Richard III. If you cast Keanu Reeves, you’ll get Keanu Reeves, dude.

6

I felt that Hayes did an OK job as Jerry Lewis so I would see no reason that he could not play in Promises, Promises. If he femmed up the roll, then yes he could be corrected for that, but I think he is sufficiently professional not to do that unless instructed by his director to do so. Then the criticism should be of the director.

7

I haven no problem with a casting director wondering if a particular actor is too femme for a specific role.

I just don’t see why knowing an actor’s sexual orientation would contribute to answering the question. There are plenty of femme straight guys and plenty of stereotypically macho looking gay guys.

The issue of whether and actor has been so solidly typecast by a previous role that audiences, regardless of the actor’s skill, won’t accept them as anything else is a different question also unrelated to actual sexual orientation.

8

A person’s physical characteristics and mannerisms are an inherent part of their acting potential. If Hayes seems really, well, gay, then it’s going to be hard to buy him in a role where being heterosexual is a critical part of the role, just as it would be hard to imagine a small actor in a role necessitating a large physique, like Jaleel “Urkel” White playing George Foreman, or a fat actor playing a role that is necessarily thin.

Neil Patrick Harris is gay, but plays straight horndog roles in “How I Met Your Mother” and the Harold and Kumar movies. Nobody minds, because Harris can look and act like a straight horndog.

All this reviewer is saying is that Sean Hayes isn’t good at it.

9

No it’s not. Because an actor/actress has to be believeable in a role.

Would you hire Topher Grace (Eric from “That 70s Show”) to play Arnold Schwarzenegger? No it has nothing to do with Grace, who’s a fine actor. He’s rail thin.

To me whether or not something like masculinity is relevant depends on the role, depends on if it’s intergral to the character.

Let me give you an example:

Rhoda from the Mary Tyler Moore Show was Jewish. Valarie Harper was not. This didn’t matter because outside of one episode (the one where Mary “Newhart” Frann played an anti-Semite) and a few throw-a-way jokes Rhoda being Jewish had nothing to do with the character. They could’ve made her a Catholic and it would’ve worked.

On the flip side:

On Archie Bunker’s Place, Martin Balsam played Archie’s partner and his character was a Jew. However unlike Rhoda it was very important that Murray, the character Balsam played, was Jewish.

That was the whole point. To have the bigoted Archie be forced to cope with a Jewish partner.

Since being Jewish was integral to the character of Murray, it is then valid to have a Jew play that role. And Balsam was Jewish.

That’s how I see it. If a role has a character trait to it. And if that character trait largely defines that role, then it’s also necessary for the actor/actress to have that trait.

If you don’t do this, two things must happen. You must rewrite the role or replace the actor/actress.

For example in the TV show Designing Women, the character of Suzanne was an beauty queen. That character trait was integral to the character and largely defined it. We all know the actress who played Suzanne, Delta Burke gained a LOT of weight.

When Delta Burke complained that the show’s producers were always telling her to lose weight, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (the show’s producer) responded by saying, “Of course we tell her that. She’s supposed to be a beauty queen. The jokes don’t work if she’s overweight.”

So in that case, they essentially rewrote the character to allow for Suzanne to be overweight, and eventually wrote her out all together. (That show used both options).

10

Just for the record, I’d like to officially disagree with the above. Harvey Fierstein is an excellent actor. Eyebrows went up across the country when they cast him as Alfred Molina’s replacement in Fiddler on the Roof - as the very straight, relatively masculine, Tevye - but he was great, believable, and much more affecting than Molina had been.

On topic, I think the problem people had with the Newsweek piece is that it doesn’t seem to limit the question to whether a particular gay actor - Sean Hayes, in this case - can play straight; it seems to suggest that no gay actor, no matter how talented, can pull it off. Which is on the face of it really silly;.

11

No, that’s really not all he’s saying:

He seems to be suggesting that just the fact that someone is gay makes them unsuitable to play a straight role, regardless of how masculine or feminine they may be. Which is damnably stupid, not least because “straight” is not a synonym for the former and “gay” is not a synonym for the latter.

12

What if a given actor *is *Jewish but does not fit your stereotype of what Jewish character traits are? What if a given actor does not happen to be Jewish but “looks” Jewish?

13

Hayes played a threatening backwoods hillbilly-type on 30 Rock and was convincingly creepy – I thought he was pretty much invisible in the role and I didn’t see him as “femme” in the least. If he was wrong for the role in Promises, Promises, that’s a different issue, but I don’t think a decent actor should have trouble hiding whatever mannerisms he may have.

Of course, as with most things, there’s a Kids in the Hall sketch that sends this up pretty well. Backstage Broadway Broads try to convince their incredibly swishy friend that he convincingly played a hetero rebel commando in “UZI: The Musical!”

14

Rhoda’s Jewishness was very much a part of the show, especially within the dynamics of the interaction with and psyche of her sister Brenda (the guilt, etc.) and Nancy Walker and Harold Gould, the quintessential Jewish parents, especially Walker. Although Harper herself was Catholic, the Jewish dynamic was about plot and behaviors (acting) which they all conveyed effectively.

Not true at all. Again, the Jewish factor was about plot (Archie dealing, Jewish plot points) and behavior (Balsam’s Jewish characteristics shown through his acting). Any good actor could have worked.

15

I can’t remember what show it was, but Hayes did a guest appearance on Scrubs where he played a hot straight guy, which was pretty impressive given that he is neither hot (pretty much average, maybe a bit better than) nor straight. At least, I think the character was straight; either that, or it just never got mentioned at all. But I seem to remember the women around the hospital kind of fawning over him (which admittedly doesn’t say anything about his character’s preferences, just that he was attractive to women).

I agree, it depends entirely on the abilities of the actor in question, but I doubt there are many professional actors of any quality who can’t “butch up” if the role requires it, just as I can’t imagine there are many professional actors who can’t swish pretty well if the role requires that. I mean, that’s what actors do.

16

No, of course not. But the author of the piece did not just say he felt Sean Hayes was wrong for the part, which might be accurate, I wouldn’t know as I have not seen the show, although when he hosted the Tonys last week he was not as flamboyant or femme as he was when playing Jack. Setoodah was saying that simply an actor being *known *as gay means audiences won’t accept them in straight roles. Which is completely false, as can be shown in numerous examples.

17

That was my take from the column, as well. And I don’t think it helped Setoodah’s argument by claiming that Neal Patrick Harris and Portia DeRossi play parodies of straight people, but not actual straight roles.

Maybe Sean Hayes played the part badly. Maybe in current culture no male can play a romantic lead in a song and dance role and not have people dismiss the character as “too gay.” But I’m one who believes that being openly gay doesn’t automatically disqualify an actor from playing a straight role.

18

It is not unforgiveable to ask the question, unless the question is posed during the course of a murder spree.

But it’s pretty silly, IMO. It’s not that the actor is too gay to play the role, it’s that the actor is not a good enough actor to play the role.

19

To get some background, I thought I’d check out the reviews for Promises, Promises. Tom O’Neil of the LA Times speculated about the production’s chances at the Tony’s.

Hayes did get nominated but lost the award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical to Douglas Hodge, a straight playing a drag queen in La Cage aux Folles. OK, let’s find some revies. From The Hollywood Reporter:

The New York Times didn’t care for the production & had a mixed response to Hayes:

The New York Post was kinder & raved about Kate Finneran:

Backstage was lukewarm about the production & the leads’ performance. But doesn’t really say “too gay”

Hayes was playing the role Jack Lemmon played in the movie. Was it really a role demanding supreme machismo?

The Newsweek writer has issues.

20

This isn’t such a great example. Just google “Eddie Brock” and look at the image results. The character is drawn with Schwartzenegger muscles, yet “rail thin” Topher Grace was cast.