Eddie Redmayne, an Oscar winner, has admitted that portraying a transgender character inside The Danish Girl was really a “mistake.” He stated that he’d never accepted a part at this time.
“No, I wouldn’t take it on now. I made that film with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake,” Redmayne told The Sunday Times. “The bigger discussion about the frustrations around casting is because many people don’t have a chair at the table. There must be a levelling, otherwise, we are going to carry on having these debates,” Redmayne continued.
In the Tom Hooper-directed picture, based on actual events, Redmayne played one of the first persons in the world to have gender reassignment surgery.
Redmayne, who won an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of crippled physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything in 2015, was nominated for an Oscar in the same category a year later for The Danish Girl. There were calls for the character to be performed by a trans actor at the time.
The actor additionally stars in J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts trilogy, the next instalment of that which, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, will be released in 2022. Redmayne spoke up about J.K. Rowling, whose been chastised for previous anti-trans views, “As someone who has worked with both J.K. Rowling and members of the Trans community, I wanted to make it absolutely clear where I stand,” Redmayne said in 2020 in a statement shared with Variety. “I disagree with Jo’s comments. Trans women are women, Trans men are men and non-binary identities are valid. I would never want to speak on behalf of the community but I do know that my dear transgender friends and colleagues are tired of this constant questioning of their identities, which all too often results in violence and abuse. They simply want to live their lives peacefully, and it’s time to let them do so.”
Eddie Redmayne is now appearing inside a new production of Cabaret at London’s Playhouse Theatre opposite Jessie Buckley. The Emcee, or Master of Ceremonies, is a character that has been portrayed by LGBTQ+ performers multiple times because it originally opened on Broadway in 1966.
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