In a recent interview, Stanley Tucci
said that his new gay drama Supernova is about “universal
love.”
The 60-year-old Tucci stars in the film
opposite Colin Firth, who is also 60.
In the film, which opened in the United
States on Friday, Tucci and Firth play Tusker and Sam, respectively,
a middle-aged gay couple who take a road trip through England's Lake
District as they digest Tusker's diagnosis with young-onset dementia.
The New York Times described the
film as “on the road, to a heartbreaking destination.”
In an interview with CBS This
Morning, Tucci was asked about the sexuality of the film's
characters.
“One of the things that's interesting
is that the sexuality of the two main characters is not a theme in
the film at all. It's a universal love story,” interviewer Holly
Williams said.
Tucci quickly agreed: “Yeah. People
are starting to come around and understand that love is just love.”
When asked about criticism that
straight actors should not play gay characters, Tucci disagreed.
“I have difficulty with that,”
Tucci said. “I think that acting is all about not being yourself.
If we were to use that as a template, then we would only ever play
ourselves.”
“I think what we need to do, we need
to give more gay actors opportunities. People who are gay have only
recently, in the last few years really, have been able to say, I'm
gay and I'm an actor. And I can play straight roles and can play [gay
roles]. They've always had to hide their sexuality so that they could
play the leading man or the leading woman,” he said.
Tucci
played a gay fashion editor in the 2006 film The Devil
Wears Prada.
“Having played a number of gay
characters, you know, you want to do it so that it's – as you
should do with any character – you just want to be truthful to it,”
Tucci added.
Firth received an Oscar nomination for
his portrayal of George Falconer, a middle-aged professor struggling
with the loss of his longtime lover, in Tom Ford's A Single Man.
He also played a gay character in the 2008 musical Mamma Mia!