Ewan MacGregor to Play Gay…Again…and Why I Couldn’t Care Less.

McGregor as Halston in Netflix's upcoming series "Halston."

(The following is strictly my opinion and should not inferred to represent the opinions of Fleshbot or its staff. But I think some might love it!)

So apparently Ryan Murphy is presenting his HALSTON mid-May on Netflix with a five-part series starring (straight dude) Ewan McGregor in the role of the cultural and fashion icon who designed Jackie Kennedy's pillbox hat and died of AIDS in 1990. He did a bunch of other stuff in between.

Oh wait, you thought when I said "I couldn't care less" you thought I meant "I couldn't care less because I won't see it because here we go again, another straight-identifying dude get accolades playing gay for pay while the queer actors sit on the sidelines."

Nope! And this is where your guy Hank makes some questionable and irreverently un-woke statements.

(AHEM...clears throat)
I don't care the sexuality of the actor playing that queer up there on the screen. Full stop.

Hollywood and the gays have had a historically fraught relationship. Gay? Couldn't get hired. Slightest whiff of gay but appeared straight? Couldn't get hired. Have a career and then gay scandal breaks? Loss of career. History is teeming with these stories. And if you were important enough of a player who was deep in the closet, the Hollywood machine made damn sure you stayed in there with its elaborate machinations while it feasted on your flesh. Rock Hudson's marriage anyone?

People (straights) played gay at their peril. And if they did, their characters usually wound up dead by the end of the film, a'la Shirley MacLaine in The Children's Hour, a rather odious piece of playwriting and film history. Or they're simply miserable like that merry band of tricksters in Boys In the Band. Go look for the documentary The Celluloid Closet for a historical romp down this delightful history.

Straights playing gay before it was chic to do so were also trail blazers, throwing caution to the wind to display their talents, and in the last few decades have earned the big awards to prove their mettle. Hillary Swank, Tom Hanks, Charlize Theron, Sean Penn to name a few. Great Actors. Great stories. Great performances. (Oh wait...they're also all dead by the end of the last reel.) Side note, kudos to Will Smith for ignoring Denzel Washington's advice to him never to play gay, and being awesome in Six Degrees of Separation! And not being dead at the end.

We're at the point though where being gay in Hollywood isn't the career-killer it once was, but something to be heralded. GREAT! Unfortunately the pendulum has shifted so that the dominant belief now is that gay should play gay, trans should play trans, etc.

And I'm not really sure how I feel about that. And by "not really sure" I mean "Bullshit." An actor should act. A good actor should get the part over a bad actor and a great actor should get the part over a good actor.

In porn, does anyone really give a shit what the sexuality of a performer is while they're fucking on cue? I don't. In fact if I know a guy is not entirely playing on my team but giving it his all and turning me right the fuck on, I say Go! For! It! Case in point, Colby Jansen. I'd only seen him in gay/bear stuff: sucking, fucking, getting fucked. I'm a total fan. I then find him on Kink.com and lo and behold, there's a slew of stuff out there with him with women: bi titles, with trans women, his female partners, other dudes...the guy is all over the place! Turns out he's not the bear daddy god I always thought but a bi, female-loving, trans-marrying porn buffet. Fantastic!

Back to McGregor. He will be great in this role. Will he display his versatile talents? Absolutely. Will he display his Scottish peen by showing us what's under his kilt? Eh...probably. He has in just about every other non-Star Wars flick. And more power to him! A lot of gay will be represented elsewhere on and behind the cameras of this project, and that's great. I couldn't care less if a big ol' gay is being played by a big ol' breeder because in the end, if he kicks ass and takes names as Halston, that's all McGregor is getting paid to do. Entertain me, tell a story, and don't be boring.

The most embarrassing thing about the whole thing will be, well...Ryan Murphy and his magically incessant LED lighting scheme. COME ON! DID YOU SEE THE PROM or RATCHED!  To quote the hockey coach from Letterkenny, "It's fucking embarrassing!"

So...thoughts?

Had to get in at least one beard shot!