Stanley Tucci defends straight actors playing gay roles: 'I believe that's fine'

Stanley Tucci has put his weight behind the rampant instance of straight actors taking on roles of gay characters.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs on Saturday, the Citadel actor pointed out the meaning of being an actor, noting that "you’re supposed to play different people."

"You just are. That’s the whole point of it," he told the program.

Insisting that he "believes that’s fine," Tucci reflected on his own portrayal of a gay character in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada and 2020 film Supernova, saying, "I am always very flattered when gay men come up to me and talk to me about ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ or they talk about ‘Supernova,’ and they say that, ‘It was just so beautiful,’ you know, ‘You did it the right way,’" he said. "Because often, it’s not done the right way."

For the unversed, Tucci is a straight white male married to literary agent Felicity Blunt.

It has been a long practice of Hollywood filmmakers to cast cis individuals to fill the shoes of minorities, with the most notable examples being the pairing of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain, Cate Blanchett’s avowed attraction towards a shopgirl in Carol among others.

Benedict Cumberbatch was also nominated for an Academy Award for his role as a sexually repressed cowboy in Netflix’s 2021 Oscar contender The Power of the Dog.

In a 2021 interview with The Guardian, a critic Guy Lodge thwarted the synonymous connection between straight actors playing gay roles and being "brave," noting: "I think that in itself is seen as fairly unremarkable now."