Straight White Actor To Play Disney's First Gay Character.

[anotheoldgit]

/// Omar Sharif Jr tweeted: “Really Disney Jungle Cruise ? Your first significant gay role will be played by a straight white man perpetuating stereotypes? Fail! This ship should sink.” ///

Does it really matter if the actor happens to be straight or dare I say it, 'WHITE' for that matter?

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/15/outrage-at-disney-casting-jack-whitehall-to-play-a-gay-character-is-misguided

[andy-hughes]

jourdain - // This is all very silly. A friend's son is an actor and every year plays a season as a pantomime dame, he is much in demand. Actors act don't they - or have things changed? //

That's not actually an appropriate comparison to the issue being discussed.

Pantomime has an ages old tradition whereby the 'Dame' character is always played by a man, and the 'Principle Boy' character is always played by a woman - nothing to do with orientation in either case.

[jno]

margarettom, Stephen Fry played Oscar Wilde, who was a father.

[margarettom]

Thank you divegirl and jno.

[sandyRoe]

Will we ever see a white actor playing Othello again?

[jourdain2]

Probably not, sandyRoe. I'm trying to remember (but can't at the moment) the name of a black actress who played an obviously white role recently - there was no outcry. Having said that, I thought that Olivier's 'Othello' was atrociously over-acted (as was his 'Heathcliffe') - - I'll get me coat after adding ACTORS ACT, that is their job.

[andy-hughes]

sandyRoe - // Will we ever see a white actor playing Othello again? //

Quite possibly.

Modern productions of Shakespeare's plays take all manner of 'liberties' with the original staging and productions of the time, not least casting women in female roles, which would have been taken by young boys in the Bard's time.

In Shakespeare's times, the political and racial points he wanted to make to chime with Elizabethan thinking were probably more literal than are required for a sophisticated twenty-first century theatre audience.

If Glenda Jackson can play Lear on Broadway to rave notices, I can't see any issue with a white actor playing Othello.

[Arksided]

I remember the outcry about Robert Downey JR playing a black man in Tropical Thunder and that was 2008. However if memory serves the film won a few awards.