Almost all casting decisions come down to money. A super famous actress playing a trans man in a lead role will absolutely draw more patrons than an unknown trans actor would.
I’m sure the hypothetical trans actor from the preceding paragraph would love to play the title role, yes, but if you’re putting up millions of dollars of your own money to produce a movie (or play or musical or whatever), then you’re the one that gets to decide if you prefer losing money on social justice or making money with named actors. (Or trying to. Most of the time you’ll lose money no matter what, which is why trying to maximize your chance to make money is a high priority.)
This is so naive as to be meaningless. Acting chops is probably the last criteria for deciding who to cast, and likely is never even brought up. Everyone is talented enough, generally. The things that matter are scheduling, star power, money (quote/rate), chemistry with other actors, easy to work with on set, etc…
I mean, imagine a straight role and you have a bunch of straight actors all vying for the role. You don’t really think the role gets awarded to the one with the best chops, do you? Everyone considered is more than talented enough.
So you would cast an actor known to be a member of the neo-Nazi party as a Holocaust surviver? Even if he was a well known actor wo would bring in the bucks and was willing to do it for a share of the take?
Whatever… I meant that casting should be done based on practical factors- acting chops was just my shorthand for that. Money, star power, chemistry, etc… are all practical factors.
Casting shouldn’t be done to satisfy political purposes- I find it absurd that people get upset that casting directors/filmmakers don’t bend over backward to find people of the exact race/color/orientation that the character in the original source was.
But I can see how casting someone whose views are specifically inimical to the character might be detrimental to the portrayal of that character
Ah, gotcha, bump. I misunderstood, and tend to agree with you.
This question can be asked from the other direction as well: Would you rather have an actor who isn’t politically correct, or not make the movie at all?
I’m an actor. I routinely pretend to be people I am not. That’s what acting is. Lately, I’ve been on a streak of playing villains. Despite what some of the lefties here apparently think, I’m actually a pretty nice guy. I do not usually shoot, stab, strangle or otherwise mutilate people that either annoy me or draw my attention. This weekend, I am going to pretend to be someone who does exactly that. I see no reason to apply some sort of bizarre, vaguely method-actingish filter to determine what roles I can accept.
The difference is that villains choose that path through the world. Race and sexual orientation are with you at birth.
I guess the bottom line question for me is, if blackface or yellowface is wrong, why isn’t gayface (I don’t know what term to use here)? I’ll admit that at this point transgendered actors may be in short enough supply that they can’t fill all the roles but I don’t know.
Maybe because gayness is not visually apparent? I dunno. A couple of years ago, I was in a play called Art. Nothing in the script says whether my character is gay or straight. I chose to think of him as gay, because it fit the character as I understood the script. I don’t think this actually changed the way I portrayed him. His voice and mannerisms were not flamboyant or stereotypical or anything. It was just me internalizing who the character was, if that makes any sense.
You’ll be saying SNL cast members shouldn’t be in comedies next.
Of course it should be allowed. I don’t think if an actor actually hates something, it generally pays to hire them to portray it, but I keep thinking of exceptions. Werner Klemperer in Hogan’s Heroes comes to mind. Christopher Walken has said in an interview he hates guns, and in King of New York, the director fired guns off camera to get him to flinch properly. It’s been a long time since I saw Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, but I thought the scientist was supposed to be upset about an upsetting situation. I don’t even think a story about a villain who doesn’t want to be villainous is particularly new. And I think there is a Straight Dope column on what to do if an actor playing a smoking role doesn’t actually smoke. On the other hand, Nazis, smoking, shrinking children, etc are all generally frowned upon.
I think I would wait for reviews to see if lighting strikes and the film sounds interesting.
That one proves the opposite of what you’re saying - Klemperer detested Nazis, and only agreed to take the role on the condition that Klink never came out on top at the end of any episode. It’s actually a perfect example of how letting someone portray a thing the actor hates leads to an unfavorable portrayal of that thing. Of course, the entire point of Hogan’s Heroes was to make Nazis look bad, and the point of The Color Purple is not to denigrate queer people, so it’s not a 1-to-1 comparison by any means, and it’s entirely possible for a homophobic actor to put in a strong, positive performance as a homosexual character. But, as far as I’m concerned, the issue isn’t if a homophobe could do a good job in the roll, so much as “Should homophobes be fired just for being homophobes.” And I’m totally okay with that happening.
FWIW, I’d be totally cool with firing someone if they’re acting like a homophobic dickweed.
I see what you’re saying, I really, really do. And in the case of someone who’s a different race, or cis vs. trans, that would make more sense.
But I think this would only cause gay people to get stuck even more as “The GAY Actor”. Sadly, I worry someone might end up getting stuck playing only playing gay roles.
I saw a big fuss over an actress being cast as a character because she wasn’t Jewish, and the character’s background was that she was born Jewish. (Or maybe it was vice versa?) How far do we want to take it?