> Sometimes I sit in a writers’ room and think: “I’m here to tick a box.”
The downside of affirmative action – if people think there is a chance they are there not just on merit but because of their race, sexuality, or whatever other intrinsic characteristic, then they will naturally feel like imposters and question their place.
> But the reaction from someone very high up, who was on a six-figure salary, was that she didn’t think audiences would find it believable.
That’s often an easy out for a TV exec who doesn’t want to deal with the hassle of telling someone that what they’re written just isn’t very good. They might be right, obviously, it might well be that the person they’re talking about didn’t think audiences would be able to handle it, but it’s also possible someone was (rightly or wrongly) sparing their feelings.
> the company I work for would now never cast a cisgender person in a trans role
That seems like a fairly risky precedent to set. If you insist actors match their characters, you lock minority actors out of a huge number of roles.
> we would never have a two-dimensionally written gay character.
This seems like an incredibly positive way to approach gay representation.
Does make working in TV sound like a pretty toxic environment all round, but
>I was given one-on-one training to de-gay my voice, which is basically conversion “therapy”.
I always thought the skill of acting was being what you are not, so surely the training was to extend their range?
I’ve never understood why voices go ‘gay’ in the first place.
Nobody is born with a gay voice. It’s an act. It’s put-on.
Which seems more ridiculous when you think of the number of celebrities who are gay and draw in huge audiences; executives would never tell Graham Norton to act more straight. Shows like Queer Eye and Ru Paul’s Drag Race also show how big LGBT programming can get, the demand is there for younger audiences. The problem is that older executives still think the LGBT community are only around to tick boxes and cannot carry a show themselves.
While this does make the industry sound uninviting, is an improvised line said in character a sign of bigotry?
Obviously it depends on the character, but I don’t think that’s a situation to gauge someone’s true feelings from.
6 comments
> Sometimes I sit in a writers’ room and think: “I’m here to tick a box.”
The downside of affirmative action – if people think there is a chance they are there not just on merit but because of their race, sexuality, or whatever other intrinsic characteristic, then they will naturally feel like imposters and question their place.
> But the reaction from someone very high up, who was on a six-figure salary, was that she didn’t think audiences would find it believable.
That’s often an easy out for a TV exec who doesn’t want to deal with the hassle of telling someone that what they’re written just isn’t very good. They might be right, obviously, it might well be that the person they’re talking about didn’t think audiences would be able to handle it, but it’s also possible someone was (rightly or wrongly) sparing their feelings.
> the company I work for would now never cast a cisgender person in a trans role
That seems like a fairly risky precedent to set. If you insist actors match their characters, you lock minority actors out of a huge number of roles.
> we would never have a two-dimensionally written gay character.
This seems like an incredibly positive way to approach gay representation.
Does make working in TV sound like a pretty toxic environment all round, but
>I was given one-on-one training to de-gay my voice, which is basically conversion “therapy”.
I always thought the skill of acting was being what you are not, so surely the training was to extend their range?
I’ve never understood why voices go ‘gay’ in the first place.
Nobody is born with a gay voice. It’s an act. It’s put-on.
Which seems more ridiculous when you think of the number of celebrities who are gay and draw in huge audiences; executives would never tell Graham Norton to act more straight. Shows like Queer Eye and Ru Paul’s Drag Race also show how big LGBT programming can get, the demand is there for younger audiences. The problem is that older executives still think the LGBT community are only around to tick boxes and cannot carry a show themselves.
While this does make the industry sound uninviting, is an improvised line said in character a sign of bigotry?
Obviously it depends on the character, but I don’t think that’s a situation to gauge someone’s true feelings from.