In a recent interview, out British
actor Ben Whishaw said that he's “all for” LGBTQ actors playing
LGBTQ roles.
Whishaw is currently promoting his
upcoming BBC series This Is Going to Hurt. In the show, which
is set in London in 2006, he plays a gay doctor “whose experience
of coming out to others is a protracted thing that creates continuing
ripple effects through his adult life.”
“I think it’s really interesting
what happens to you if you grow up thinking there’s something wrong
with you because you’re attracted to a certain thing,” he told
The
Guardian. “That takes a lot of time and understanding to
get over. And understanding doesn’t just arrive because you’ve
been explicit and open to other people.”
“The equating of homosexuality with
weakness – it’s taken a long time for me to understand there’s
no reason why it should be anything of the sort. Honestly? I feel
like I’m only starting to conquer that now.”
“I definitely remember feeling, for
me at least, that it was much less easy to be tactile with a gay
partner [in 2006]. It’s still amazing to me that a display of
affection between two men could be so distressing that someone would
throw things, or tell me to ‘find a fucking room,'” he said.
(Related: Ben
Whishaw comes out gay; entered union with Mark Bradshaw last year.)
When asked about Eddie Redmayne's
portrayal of Lili Elbe, a transgender pioneer, in the 2015 film The
Danish Girl, Whishaw, who appeared in the film, praised
Redmayne's performance but added that he's “all for” a
transgender actor taking such parts.
"Going forward, there will be
other films in which the role is given to someone who lived that
experience,” Whishaw, 41, said.
"Why shouldn’t a role like that
be given to someone who knows, inside, what the character is? I’m
all for that. I feel the same, sometimes, about straight actors
playing gay parts. I’m critical if I don’t think the performance
is, from my subjective experience, accurate."
“[E]ven a small moment of hesitation
or inauthenticity will block my engagement with the whole story. So I
understand these questions,” he added.
Redmayne
has since called his participation in the film a “mistake.”