Mad Men co-star Bryan Batt and
Milk scribe Dustin Lance Black are the latest gay celebrities
to speak out against Newsweek's slam on gay actors who take on
straight roles.
“Gay actors have been playing
straight since Euripides,” Batt, who is openly gay, told ABC News.
“It really saddens me that someone actually thinks this way and
that Newsweek would actually print it.”
Batt, 47, was referring to an April
26 story titled Straight
Jacket. In the feature, openly gay contributor Ramin
Setoodeh is critical of openly gay actors who take on straight roles.
Setoodeh says it's “OK for straight
actors to play gay” referring to Jake Gyllenhaal's and Heath
Ledger's 2005 gay cowboy romance flick Brokeback Mountain, but
adds that “its rare for someone to pull off the trick in reverse.”
He
then cuts into Sean Hayes' portrayal of straight man Chuck in the
Broadway revival of Promises, Promises:
“He comes off as wooden and insincere, like he's trying to hide
something, which of course he is.” Hayes, who recently came
out gay on the cover of gay glossy The
Advocate, has been nominated
for a
Best Actor in a Musical Tony Award for his Broadway debut.
Setoodeh
also takes aim at Jonathan Groff's performance on Fox's musical
comedy hit Glee,
saying he's “so distracting, I'm starting to wonder if Groff's
character on the show is supposed to be secretly gay.”
“I could care
less who these actors do, it's what they do,” Batt said. “When
are we going to stop labeling everyone? How many ties have I been
referred to as 'out gay actor?' Do we say, 'out heterosexual actor'
when we refer to Tom Hanks?”
“It's called
acting, people,” Batt added.
On
Wednesday, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
joined openly gay Glee
creator Ryan Murphy in urging Newsweek to
apologize. Murphy asked fans to dump Newsweek
until an apology is at hand, and demanded the weekly apologize to
Hayes and other “brave out actors who were cruelly singled out in
his damaging, needlessly cruel, and mind-blowingly bigoted piece.”
In
backing Murphy's call for an apology, GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios
said: “Whether he intended it to or not, Ramin Setoodeh's article
in Newsweek sends a
false and damaging message about gay actors by endorsing the idea
that there are limits to the roles they are able to play.”
Dustin
Lance Black and Barrios questioned Setoodeh's motives in a piece
published Wednesday at
The
Hollywood Reporter: “Maybe
Setoodeh can't see Glee
and Promises, Promises
except through a lens of dark stereotypes he's inherited. Maybe he's
got some axe to grind. But whatever the reason, with the stakes so
high for gay Americans at this moment, it is no excuse for his
editors inflicting such hurtful – and baseless – musings on the
readers of Newsweek.”