In an interview with NPR, out actor
Tituss Burgess responded to criticism about the flamboyant best
friend character he plays on Netflix's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
The 38-year-old Burgess' portrayal of
Titus Andromedon has earned him an Emmy nomination.
“I've heard a narrative about LGBT
characters on TV,” interviewer Ari Shapiro started. “And I know
you're familiar with this. It goes, look how far we've come. It used
to be that every gay character on TV was an effeminate, flamboyant
best friend and now America's moved past that. And your character is
an effeminate, flamboyant best friend. And there have definitely been
people who have said you're not helping the cause. … How do you
respond to that?”
“They're not watching the show.”
Burgess
responded. “Titus Andromedon is more everyman than any other
character on that TV show. He's broke. He doesn't have money to pay
the rent. He can't keep a job. He gets racially profiled. I mean, so
what that he adds a couple of s's to the words he says or, you know,
wears women's clothes?”
“If how someone moves about the world
on the spectrum of masculinity to femininity is a measure with which
the cause or LGBT characters have either moved forward or regressed,
if that's what they're basing it on, then what kind of
two-dimensional world are they living in? So the question sounds
ill-informed already, and I tend to not answer it.”