Who Gets To Play Transgender Roles In Hollywood

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LOS ANGELES — More than at any time in its history, Hollywood is under enormous pressure to find performers who match the racial and ethnic traits of characters.

 

Ridley Scott was harshly criticized for using non-Egyptian actors to play Egyptians in “Exodus.” The director Cameron Crowe faced an online mob for casting Emma Stone as an Asian-American woman in “Aloha.” (He ultimately apologized.) When Warner Bros. announced that Rooney Mara would play Tiger Lily in its forthcoming “Pan,” the studio was served with a petition headlined “Stop Casting White Actors to Play People of Color!”

 

But does it remain acceptable — at this Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox moment — for non-transgender actors and actresses to play transgender characters?

 

Hollywood is about to find out. Two high-profile new films, each with Oscar aspirations, star performers who are not transgender in major transgender roles. On Saturday, “The Danish Girl,” with Eddie Redmayne in the title role, will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. “About Ray,” starring Elle Fanning as a teenager in early gender transition, arrives next Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival.

 

Both casting decisions reflect what remains the dominant view in movies and television. A dozen casting directors, producers, network programmers and studio executives said in interviews that transgender roles were best filled by finding the best actor or actress, regardless of gender identity. In other words, acting is acting. Besides, they asked, don’t transgender performers want to be considered for non-transgender roles?

 

Peter Saraf, a producer of “About Ray,” which is to be released in theaters on Sept. 18, said emphatically at the start of an interview that Hollywood needed to work “a lot harder to create opportunities for trans actors to play any kind of role.” That said, he defended the casting of Ms. Fanning.

 

“We try to make the strongest creative choices we can,” he said. “Elle, who is one of the most exciting and extraordinary actresses working today, was passionate about the role, and we had the confidence that she could carry a movie.”

 

But some advocates believe that it is flatly offensive for a non-transgender performer to play a transgender part. Jos Truitt, executive director of development at Feministing, an online network, put it this way: When actors like Mr. Redmayne and Jared Leto (who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Rayon in “Dallas Buyers Club”) play these roles, it perpetuates “the stereotype that trans women are just men in drag.”

 

At least in some corners of Hollywood, a similar position is gaining steam.

 

“At this moment in time, especially, I think this industry has a responsibility to put trans actors in trans roles,” said Sean Baker, who directed “Tangerine,” an independent film that was released in July and starred two transgender actresses. “To not do it seems very wrong in my eyes. There is plenty of trans talent out there.”

 

Adding complexity to the matter, Glaad, which aggressively monitors Hollywood’s depictions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters, has taken a more nuanced stance. Jeffrey Tambor plays a retired professor beginning a transition on Amazon’s “Transparent,” and in March that series won a Glaad Media Award, a prize that lists “fair, accurate and inclusive representations” among its criteria.

 

“There is a consensus that trans actors bring a certain authenticity to a trans role and that trans actors should also have the opportunity to play non-trans characters,” said Nick Adams, who leads Glaad’s transgender efforts. Beyond that, Mr. Adams said, there is little agreement among advocates, with some supporting Ms. Truitt’s hard-line position and others allowing that “in certain circumstances, a non-trans person can play a trans character if they do their homework and learn from trans people, as Jeffrey Tambor did.”

 

For the most part, the transgender stories that Hollywood is telling focus on early transition, perhaps because that process can be mined easily for drama, Mr. Adams noted. That focus also gives studios cover to cast non-transgender performers; Mr. Redmayne must appear as a man at the beginning of “The Danish Girl,” for instance. (Glaad is pushing Hollywood to focus less on transition stories.)

 

Movies like “About Ray” and “The Danish Girl” also face business realities.

 

“I’m embarrassed to say this, because I do strongly believe that we should be casting transgender performers in these parts — it matters — but often you don’t even seriously consider them, because the studio needs a name for financing or marketing reasons,” said one leading casting director, speaking on the condition of anonymity because, she said, she considered the topic “radioactive.”

 

Ms. Fanning and Mr. Redmayne were not available for interviews, according to their representatives. None of the filmmakers or studio executives behind “The Danish Girl” would discuss Mr. Redmayne’s casting.

 

“The Danish Girl” is the more high-profile film, in part because it comes from an Academy Award-winning director, Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”), and stars the reigning best actor; Mr. Redmayne won an Oscar in February for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything.” Mr. Hooper approached Mr. Redmayne for “The Danish Girl” in 2011, when they were working on “Les Misérables.”

 

Mr. Hooper recently told Screen Daily that he sensed “a certain gender fluidity” in Mr. Redmayne. “The Danish Girl,” set for release in theaters on Nov. 27 by the Universal-owned Focus Features, tells the true story of a Copenhagen artist who underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1930. It was one of the first such efforts.

 

In the time it took for “The Danish Girl” to be made, however, transgender issues have leaped to the cultural forefront.

 

Ms. Cox, the transgender actress who plays Sophia Burset on “Orange Is the New Black,” appeared on the cover of Time last year. President Obama in January turned heads by using the word “transgender” in his State of the Union address. “Transparent” won best comedy series in front of 19 million viewers at the last Golden Globe Awards.

 

And then came Ms. Jenner, who spoke about her transition in a prime-time ABC News special, subsequently posing for the cover of Vanity Fair.

 

At the same time, pushback on casting decisions large and small has become harder for Hollywood to ignore. Just a few years ago, protests of insensitivity — over the hiring of Johnny Depp to play Tonto in “The Lone Ranger,” for instance, or giving Jake Gyllenhaal the lead in “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” — were barely blips on the movie industry’s radar. But fans, advocacy groups and rank-and-file critics have grown more sophisticated in their use of social media to organize and voice disappointment.

 

In today’s Internet culture, the tendency is to shoot first and ask questions later. Nuance doesn’t always matter. Tiger Lily, who exists in the public imagination (and not in a particularly sensitive way) as a Native American woman, was rewritten to be of a nonspecific race, Ms. Mara ultimately explained. “Pan” is scheduled for release on Oct. 9.

 

Perhaps to get ahead of any blowback, Focus recently had Mr. Redmayne explain to Out magazine how he met with many transgender women to educate himself. “Gosh, it’s delicate,” he said in that interview. “And complicated.”

 

Part of the frustration with Hollywood among transgender people involves the lack of transgender characters, even with heightened cultural attention. Of the 161 mainstream and art house films that Glaad tracked in its last Studio Responsibility Index, released in April, none had a transgender character. “The list of mainstream films that have depicted transgender people as multifaceted or even recognizable human beings remains tragically short,” Glaad wrote in the report.

 

Television, which moves faster as a business and does not face the same pressure to cast stars, is doing a better job. “Transparent,” “Orange Is the New Black” and “Sense8” — notably all from streaming services — prominently feature transgender characters and transgender actors and actresses. Glaad gives particular credit to “The Fosters,” an ABC Family series that features the transgender actor Tom Phelan as a transgender teenager.

 

Glaad is to release a report in November that assesses the television landscape from a transgender perspective. On Thursday, it released its annual Network Responsibility Index, which focuses on “the quantity and quality” of images of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people on television, and used the platform to push for more transgender representation. It told CW, for instance, that it hopes to “see a transgender character make an appearance very soon.”

 

For transgender actors and actresses, that is encouraging — if networks seek them out for any resulting roles.

 

“Because I am a trans woman in 2015, there are opportunities that wouldn’t have existed for me three years ago,” said Hari Nef, who will join the cast of “Transparent” when it returns in December. “But Hollywood still seems very wary. There is not a rush of casting agents headed our way. Let’s hope that changes. I’m right here!”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/movies/who-gets-to-play-the-transgender-part-in-hollywood.html

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