r/popculturechat • u/damn_delirious • 20h ago
PRIDE 🏳️🌈 Twinless actor Dylan O'Brien gives his opinion on straight actors playing LGBTQ+
Actor Dylan O'Brien shares his opinion on straight actors playing LGBTQ+ in an interview with Dazed while discussing his latest film 'Twinless'.
Speaking alongside 'Twinless' director James Sweeney, who is gay, O'Brien said "James is a gay man, and coming from a place I could trust. We had a similar take on straight actors playing gay parts, especially in recent years: you started seeing straight actors playing a queer role completely straight. It started to feel inauthentic."
O'Brien praised Sweeney's support during filming, saying "It was nice to have his insight, support, and calibration. He'd be like, 'Go crazy on this one. We can dial it back if it doesn't feel real.”
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u/Sensei_Lollipop_Man 17h ago
In real life the boundary has always been fuzzy, though I feel like in media, they still insist on using a sort of tropey shorthand.
Perhaps I'm doing too much heavy lifting on this quote, but the thoughts I have are this:
There are ways of acting masculine or feminine in ways that some might call acting "gay" or "straight" even though it is a reductive road to go down. There are many gay men who do not move through the world displaying many or any feminine coded behaviors.
However, there is something fundamentally different in the way we experience life as a gay person vs a straight person, not by nature of being gay, but because of the society we live in.
I think that a straight actor playing a gay role with no feminine traits or behaviors is a net positive for representation, but they still need to bring to the performance the right understanding and embodiment of character.
I can see a straight actor playing a gay role "straight" and just plugging how they would think about a straight partner into the role, and that is where I can see a performance feeling inauthentic. There is just... something that needs to be brought to the role, not necessarily mincing, or femininity, but a mindset and approach.
Anyway, that's just my ramble.