Why does Hunter Schafer stop playing trans characters to help the queer community?

Revealed less than five years ago through her role as Jules, a trans character on HBO’s essential series Euphoria, actress Hunter Schafer is experiencing extraordinary popularity in Hollywood. However, if she had wanted, the actress would have appeared in a number of otherwise substantial roles… At the expense of her personal and political beliefs.

“I just want to be a girl and finally move on”

In an interesting interview for GQ, the actress confided that she refused “tons of trans roles” After Euphoria. Even more, try not to use the term “trans” in his interviews and goes so far as to confide it “I don’t even want to talk about it”.

In the GQ columns, the actress explains that the label was “transgender actress”. “ultimately humiliating” for his profession and his career. Referring to the difficulties of his past, linked in particular to his high school days, he confided yes a realization once she became an adult and an actress :

I have worked so hard to get to where I am after the very difficult times I went through during my transition. Now, I just want to be a girl and finally move on.

Transgender actress: the threat of being reduced to a symbol

We should interpret these choices as a dissociation of the actress towards the queer community? In reverse. Far from being depoliticized, this approach is a means to distract the media from their obsession with her trans identity. He summarizes it with this strong formula:

“If I had accepted this {play only trans characters}, every article about the film would have written “transsexual actress””

This choice of roles is also a way of hinder exploitation people from minorities sometimes worked in films and series. The actress made the difficult choice to stop the industry from reducing her to tokenthis ploy that a group or organization resorts to a person belonging to a minority, to be able to boast of being inclusive. The characters of token they often leave little space for the actor or actress to really make their voice, their uniqueness, their talent heard.

Promote the trans community, without falling into the traps of Hollywood

This decision does not detract from his investment in the queer community, as he explains later in the interview:

“I know for a fact that I am one of the most famous trans people in media right now, and I feel a sense of responsibilityand maybe a little guilt, no longer be a spokesperson.

But in the end I really believe it not making it the focus of what I do will allow me to go further. And I think rather than going further AND Do fantastic things, for the good of the “movement”it’ll be fine more useful than talking about it all the time.

In other words, Hunter Schafer is not just a trans woman: she is above all a woman and an actress. This complexity mixed with his talent is what he best possesses to make the richness of a systematically invisible and denied community shine, as the excellent film reminds us. Disclosureavailable on Netflix.

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