Stanley Tucci: straight actors should be allowed to play gay roles

The American star, known for his role in The Devil Wears Prada, says the job of an actor is ‘to play different people’.

American actor Stanley Tucci says that actors should not be limited to roles that reflect their own sexuality. Picture: Getty

American actor Stanley Tucci says that actors should not be limited to roles that match their own sexuality.

The actor, known for his roles in blockbusters like The Devil Wears Prada and The Hunger Games, told BBC Radio 4 that he believes that as an actor, “you’re supposed to play different people.”

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

Asked by host Lauren Laverne how he responded to criticism over him playing a gay character in the 2020 romantic drama Supernova, in which he starred opposite Oscar-winner Colin Firth, Tucci said: “Obviously, I believe that’s fine.”

”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.”

In the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, Stanley Tucci portrayed a gay art director. Picture: 20th Century Studios

The question of which actors should be allowed to play which roles has become increasingly debated, especially regarding portrayals of historically marginalised groups.

Russell T Davis, the screenwriter behind LGBT+ hits like Queer as Folk, A Very English Scandal, and It‘s A Sin — the latter in which nearly all the gay roles are played by gay actors — has argued in interviews that only gay actors should be allowed in gay roles. “I’m going to war,” he told the New York Times in 2021. ”I want the likes of Colin Firth to be ashamed of their actions.” Firth earned his first Academy Award nomination in 2009 for playing a gay character in A Single Man.

In March, Australian actor Guy Pearce courted controversy over a slew of tweets in which he wrote that actors should not have to announce their gender identity or sexual preference to attain work, and it should not be used to preclude them from work. “Isn‘t the point of an actor to be able to play anyone outside your own world?” he wrote, in a since-deleted tweet.

”Many people out there with incredible life experiences … fall flat when the camera is rolling. It’s an art form.” ”If the only people allowed to play trans characters are transfolk, then are we also suggesting the only people trans folk can play are trans characters?”

Within 24 hours, the actor whose breakout role was as a drag queen in the 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, released a statement apologising for “insensitive” tweets, writing that casting ”the subject onto one minority group in particular was unnecessary. ”