It’s A Sin writer Russell T Davies has urged Hollywood stars to turn down gay roles in films and instead encourage producers to instead cast an LGBT actor.
The 57-year-old producer said famous gay actors ‘don’t exist to lead blockbusters’ and straight actors must ‘step aside’ to help them get more opportunities.
All the gay characters in his Channel 4 drama, which chronicles the lives and deaths of a group of friends in the 1980s AIDS epidemic, are played by LGBT actors.
But Swansea-born Davies, who is gay, admitted his house was ‘built off straight people who played gay parts’ and said any change has to begin at ‘ground level’.
It comes a month after Davies caused much debate after claiming only gay actors should play gay characters in film and TV to ensure an authentic portrayal.
It’s A Sin writer Russell T Davies (pictured in March 2019) has urged Hollywood stars to turn down gay roles in films and instead encourage producers to instead cast an LGBT actor
All the gay characters in Channel 4’s It’s A Sin are played by gay actors. The series follows three gay 18-year-olds who arrive in London in 1981, at the beginning of the HIV epidemic
Speaking on Damian Barr’s Literary Salon last night, Davies said he ‘genuinely regrets’ if he upset actors who are playing gay roles with his comments in January.
But he added: ‘The problem is if you’re a famous actor, let’s look at the famous ones, and I mean movie star levels, I think now, I’ve gone on the attack, if you’re a movie star level, you’ve got money, you’re fine, you’re going to get lots of offers.
‘I think if you get offered a film in a gay role, you should turn it down, and you should take those production companies by the hand and say ‘I’ve got a lot of clout, I’ve got a lot of people, come with me to raise money over here, and I will help you get a gay person into the leading roles’.
‘Because the problem is, if you don’t start at the bottom with young kids, like the cast of It’s A Sin – I’m looking at the top now, because the truth is there are no leading gay men or leading gay women who can finance the production, and there never will be unless those straight actors step aside.
‘If they don’t, and they’ve got to – use your power, say ‘I’ll have a supporting role’, get this person here who should be in lead roles – they don’t exist, the famous leading lesbians, the famous leading gay men, they don’t exist to lead blockbusters.’
He added that this then sees the industry ‘caught in a loop’, because ‘people will stop making gay productions’ if leading straight actors are turning down gay roles ‘because it’s all about money’.
Davies said: ‘So then they’ll say, ‘well we can’t get a lead actor to do this, we can’t get anyone who raises money to do this’, and then they’ll come knocking at my door saying ‘my film can’t get made because of you and your proclamations’, and doesn’t that show how unequal it is, doesn’t it?
‘Doesn’t that show how any notion of equality is paper thin, it’s compost thin, it’s s*** thin, it actually isn’t equal at all, once you start to realise that the financing collapses and the films will stop being made because the gay actors aren’t there.
‘That’s why you have to start at this level, at the ground level, at a Channel 4 drama going out on a Friday night, yes it’s been successful, but it’s actually quite bread and butter television in that sense – it’s exactly what Channel 4 should be making.
‘So you have to create people at this grand level, you have to take someone like Olly Alexander who I think is an absolutely superstar, Callum, Omari, Nathaniel, all of them and brilliant, lovely David Carlyle who’s Gloria, I don’t think he gets enough credit. Absolutely wonderful.
Davies spoke on Damian Barr’s Literary Salon last night about gay actors playing gay roles
‘Create them now, create those stars so that in ten years’ time maybe Olly Alexander will raise the money – and that’s a hard thing, I mean raising $30million for a film, no businessman wants to waste that money.
‘So you have to do this, you have to start here, because nothing is moving at the top, and that proves it’s massively unequal. ‘It’s fair, it’s balanced, gay can play this, straight can play that’ – no, it’s not remotely fair, there is no balance. It needs work, it needs an attack.’
It’s A Sin follows the stories of three gay 18-year-olds who arrive in London in 1981, at the beginning of the HIV epidemic, and its star-studded cast includes Olly Alexander, Neil Patrick Harris, and Stephen Fry.
Davies, who was behind Doctor Who’s 2005 revival, said last month that directors must cast gay men to play gay male roles because you ‘wouldn’t black someone up’ in the modern day.
He insisted he was ‘not being woke about this’ and said the idea of ‘acting gay’ is just a ‘bunch of codes for a performance’ and is not authentic.
Queer as Folk, about the lives of three men in Manchester, was Davies’ first gay TV drama – and he cast straight actors in the role.
Actor Alan Davies starred as a gay teacher in Russell T Davies’s hit 2001 show Bob & Rose, while his 2018 miniseries A Very English Scandal featured Hugh Grant, who is straight, playing Liberal politician Jeremy Thorpe.
Russell T Davies’s 2015 series Cucumber, and its companion show Banana, also saw straight actors Freddie Fox and Vincent Franklin in gay roles.
He previously said It’s A Sin – which began filming in October 2019 and was released last month – is loosely influenced by his own life.
The writer was just 18 when the HIV crisis began in 1981, but he did not contract the disease.
He has previously cast gay actors in roles where they played gay characters – including Russel Tovey in Years and Years, and John Barrowman in Torchwood.
Tovey spoke out in 2018 after Jack Whitehall faced criticism for being cast as a gay character in the Disney movie, Jungle Cruise.
Tovey told the Independent: ‘If you’re an actor, you’re an actor. The whole thing with Jack playing a gay character… I’m like, just let him act.’