Cis Actors in Trans Roles: Why It Matters
By: Logan Ashley
Tags: LGBTQ, LGBT Rights, Film, Film Criticism, Transgender

In January of 2019, Ben Whishaw won a Golden Globe for his role in “A Very English Scandal”, a TV miniseries about a 70’s British scandal wherein the leader of the Liberal party attempted to have his ex-lover, Norman Scott, killed in order to silence him. Excellent three episodes, my highest recommendations.

After this win and backstage, Whishaw was asked about his take on straight actors choosing not to take on explicitly gay roles (the question asked specifically in response to Darren Criss’s decision to no longer do so). A gay man himself, Ben Whishaw said that, as long as there is an even field for all, he doesn’t mind who plays what: “…I really believe that actors can embody and portray anything and we shouldn’t be defined only by what we are. On the other hand, I think there needs to be greater equality. I would like to see more gay actors playing straight roles.”

I’m inclined to agree — in the cases of portrayals of sexuality, at least. There’s a significant amount of debate on either side of the issue, and I see validity in both arguments. You can see no issue in a straight man playing a gay character, and you can want gay people to be able to tell their own stories. I’m planted somewhere firmly in the middle, believing that while LGB people should have first priority in telling their own stories, a Nick Robinson or Taron Egerton here or there isn’t going to do any irreparable damage. In my opinion, having an LGB person behind the camera is just as, if not more, important than having one in front of it.

Taron Egerton as Elton John, “Rocketman”

That said, I leave out the “T” because that is a very different conversation. When a straight actor plays a gay role, nobody looks at that like “oh, see, the character is actually straight”. But when you cast, for example, a cisgender man in the role of a transgender woman, you’re putting across that a trans woman is “really” a man.

The distinctions between “straight actor playing gay” and “cis actor playing trans” often get argued together, and that ends up muddling the point of either. It makes it hard for the average straight, cisgender person to comprehend the difference, why one is very bad and one is less so. Most older folks in my life still can’t understand that gender is not inherently tied to sexuality, let alone understand the discourse that comes with discussing gender and sexuality as portrayed in film.

So, I thought it worth it to examine why casting cis people in the roles of trans people is so harmful, beyond incorrect casting if possible.

(And for the sake of things, we’ll be mostly focused on film. I don’t watch enough television to have any relevant talking points.)

Incorrect casting, of course, is what gets the most media attention. In the case of transgender characters in film, incorrect casting is what happens when a cisgender woman is cast in the role of a transgender man, or a cis man in the role of a trans woman. It’s a Hollywood tradition that’s been going on since the 1970’s, at least: films like “Boys Don’t Cry”, “The Danish Girl”, and “3 Generations” all portray transgender characters as played by cisgender actors. Each film, in their effort to humanize trans people, only end up reinforcing the same stereotypes about transgender people that transphobes have pushed for decades.

I just went in depth about the transphobia that went into the creation of “Boys Don’t Cry”, but the shorter version of that article is that the director of that film, Kimberly Peirce, never once thought about the subject of her film as a male. She only ever considered the role of Brandon Teena to be filled by a woman, and thus her film reinforced the idea that transgender men are simply women under mental stress.

“The Danish Girl” is a more recent, though similar example. I’ll hand the picking apart of this one to a trans woman, as any insight into that can’t be accurately provided by me.

“It’s no surprise that a cis male director would focus so intensely on a trans woman’s choice of fashion, as “sad man in drag” is just as easy a transgender stereotype as any mention of The Surgery… Hooper and Redmayne have spent so much time and effort leching and leering at Lili’s femininity, we’re never given an insight on what else she really wants besides being a woman. What they give us instead are the stereotypical tropes of a housewife — simple retail job, gossiping with the girlfriends, desperately wants to have kids of her own — with nothing else to define her. Like the rest of the film, her ultimate form of femininity is a simplification, a caricature.” — Carol Grant, Indiewire

(For my own take, I got about thirty minutes into the film before closing out and being angry for three solid hours; I only watched to check a film off of Ben Whishaw’s filmography and no, I still have not forgiven him for taking on a part in this movie. I love the man, but there’s only so much fetishization of womanhood that I can stand to look at in between his scenes. If you want to make a film about Eddie Redmayne in panties getting dominated by Alicia Vikander, fine, but don’t do it in a movie about a real-life trans woman).

On a different spot on the spectrum, some films fall into a seldom-touched middle category; they cast cis women as trans women, and cis men as trans men. I can count on one hand the number of movies that fit here (fun fact, one of which is “Alien”. No joke, Lambert is a trans woman, check it out!), and most of the ones that I’ve seen have… not made the best of impressions.

Rick Okon as Lukas, “Romeos”

One such film is “Romeos”, a German film about a transgender young adult named Lukas and his romance with a cisgender gay man, Fabio. The actor playing Lukas is a cisgender male, fitted with either a prosthetic or CGI in order to give him breasts. It’s a step in the right direction, and I’d give the film more credit if the actual story and characters weren’t completely abhorrent (because nothing says a film about humanizing a transgender man like having him be verbally abused throughout and end up with the man who said he “doesn’t like trannies” and never apologizes for it).

So while it has seldom worked in practice, I don’t have as many inherent problems with cisgender casting for transgender roles when its cast right. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but it’s significantly less (sigh) problematic than the casting of a cisgender person of the opposite gender for the role. If I had a choice only between the two then obviously I want us to be portrayed properly in the world of fiction.

The casting problem is somewhat unique, though not entirely separate of the other issue to be brought up here, that of proper casting behind the camera. The films I’ve brought up throughout the article have all been written by cisgender men and women, people who can only write about the experience of a transgender person from the outside looking in.

I had a hard time figuring out how to best articulate how this problem manifests until I remembered the “3 Generations” film existed. The film actually manages to highlight improper casting and improper crew, so we’ll go over a brief overview of the thing here.