SCARJO PULLS OUT OF TRANS MAN ROLE AFTER BACKLASH
The transgender community has been protesting against the actor’s casting, saying that the role should have gone to an actual trans man
Hollywood actor Scarlett Johansson on Friday withdrew from the film Rub & Tug after her plans to portray a transgender man prompted a backlash.
In a statement to Out.com on Friday, Johansson said that she was pulling out of the project “in light of recent ethical questions raised surrounding my casting”.
Last week, Johansson said that she’d star as Dante “Tex” Gill, who was born Lois Jean Gill but identified as a man, and was a prostitution ring leader in Pittsburgh, US, in the Seventies and Eighties.
When transgender actors and advocates questioned the casting, Johansson initially responded with a statement that criticism “can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto and Felicity Huffman’s reps” — all are cisgender actors who won acclaim for playing transgender characters. (A cisgender person is someone whose identity is aligned with their birth gender.) The actor said on Friday, “Our cultural understanding of transgender people continues to advance, and I’ve learned a lot from the community since making my first statement about my casting and realise it was insensitive.”
She added, “...I am thankful that this casting debate, albeit controversial, has sparked a larger conversation about diversity and representation in film,” she said.
It’s not clear if the film, which Johansson was also producing, will go forward. AP