- Joined
- Aug 10, 2006
- Messages
- 3,604
- Reaction score
- 2,421
Scarlett Johansson quits transgender role after LGBT backlash
US actress Scarlett Johansson has pulled out of a movie in which she was cast to play a transgender character following a backlash from some members of the LGBT community who believed the part should have gone to a transgender actor.
Johansson had agreed to take a role in Rub & Tug as Dante "Tex" Gill — a real-life American crime kingpin who used his massage parlour as a front for prostitution in the 1970s and 1980s.
PHOTO: Dante Gill was born a woman but identified as a man. (AP: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Gill was born a woman but identified as a man. It was the second time Johansson, an American of European descent, found herself in the middle of a casting controversy after appearing in 2017 film Ghost in the Shell — in a role originally conceived as a Japanese character.
Johansson said she had decided to withdraw from Rub & Tug for ethical reasons.
"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 said in a statement to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender magazine, Out.
I love the twitter posts, this shit is getting awesome. One giant dumpster fire after another. I can't believe people would be upset at an actor/actress playing a role.
US actress Scarlett Johansson has pulled out of a movie in which she was cast to play a transgender character following a backlash from some members of the LGBT community who believed the part should have gone to a transgender actor.
Johansson had agreed to take a role in Rub & Tug as Dante "Tex" Gill — a real-life American crime kingpin who used his massage parlour as a front for prostitution in the 1970s and 1980s.
PHOTO: Dante Gill was born a woman but identified as a man. (AP: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Gill was born a woman but identified as a man. It was the second time Johansson, an American of European descent, found herself in the middle of a casting controversy after appearing in 2017 film Ghost in the Shell — in a role originally conceived as a Japanese character.
Johansson said she had decided to withdraw from Rub & Tug for ethical reasons.
"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 said in a statement to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender magazine, Out.
I love the twitter posts, this shit is getting awesome. One giant dumpster fire after another. I can't believe people would be upset at an actor/actress playing a role.
