Glee creator calls for Newsweek boycott
| 14 May 2010
"Boycott Newsweek magazine" says Glee creator Ryan Murphy after the magazine published an article suggesting gay men can't play straight characters.
Murphy wrote an open letter claim asking for an apology following Theatre Reviewer Ramin Setoodeh’s controversial article, “Straight Jacket” which lead with the introduction "Heterosexual actors play gay all the time. Why doesn't it ever work in reverse?".
The story criticises Sean Hayes' (Will & Grace) Broadway performance in Promises, Promises, saying that the openly gay actor “comes off as wooden and insincere, like he’s trying to hide something, which of course he is.”
The article prompted Glee creator Murphy to for a boycott of the magazine until it apologises to its gay readers, Hayes and “and other brave out actors who were cruelly singled out in this damaging, needlessly cruel and mind-blowingly bigoted piece.”
Read Ryan Murphy's full response here
Other well-known Hollywood identities have also chimed in with their criticism of the article, including Kristen Chenoweth, Haye's co-star in Promises, Promises who responded to the article in a long and detailed letter.
"I'd normally keep silent on such matters and write such small-minded viewpoints off as perhaps a blip in common sense. But the offense I take to this article, and your decision to publish it, is not really even related to my profession or my work with Hayes or Jonathan Groff (also singled out in the article as too 'queeny' to play 'straight.') This article offends me because I am a human being, a woman and a Christian. For example, there was a time when Jewish actors had to change their names because anti-Semites thought no Jew could convincingly play Gentile. Setoodeh even goes so far as to justify his knee-jerk homophobic reaction to gay actors by accepting and endorsing that 'as viewers, we are molded by a society obsessed with dissecting sexuality, starting with the locker room torture in junior high school'."
Read Kristen Chenoweth's full response here
Photo: Sean Hayes and Kristen Chenoweth on stage in a production of Promises, Promises
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