The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

May 10, 2010, 10:44 am
Chenoweth Fires Back at Newsweek for Criticizing Gay Actors in Straight Roles
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Hayes in the Broadway revival of “Promises, Promises.”
Not that we have any beef with Kristin Chenoweth to begin with, but we’d think long and hard about picking a war of words with her after this. On Friday, Ms. Chenoweth, the Tony Award-winner and star of “Promises, Promises,” posted a lengthy online rebuttal to a Newsweek article that she called “horrendously homophobic” for contending that gay actors could not play straight characters, and citing her “Promises, Promises” co-star Sean Hayes as an example.
In the original Newsweek article, called “Straight Jacket” and published online in April, Ramin Setoodeh wrote: “While it’s OK for straight actors to play gay (as Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger did in ‘Brokeback Mountain’), it’s rare for someone to pull off the trick in reverse.”
Among the openly gay actors Mr. Setoodeh cited was Jonathan Groff, Ms. Chenoweth’s co-star on “Glee,” of whom he wrote: “When he smiles or giggles, he seems more like your average theater queen.” Mr. Setoodeh also criticized Mr. Hayes for his performance in “Promises, Promises,” writing, “Frankly, it’s weird seeing Hayes play straight. He comes off as wooden and insincere, like he’s trying to hide something, which of course he is.”
In her response, which was published at Newsweek.com as well as Broadway.com and Autostraddle.com, Ms. Chenoweth wrote: “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.”
She added:
Audiences aren’t giving a darn about who a person is sleeping with or his personal life. Give me a break! We’re actors first, whether we’re playing prostitutes, baseball players, or the Lion King. Audiences come to theater to go on a journey. It’s a character and it’s called acting, and I’d put Hayes and his brilliance up there with some of the greatest actors period.
At the end of her letter, Ms. Chenoweth wrote, “No one needs to see a bigoted, factually inaccurate article that tells people who deviate from heterosexual norms that they can’t be open about who they are and still achieve their dreams.” She added: “I encourage Newsweek to embrace stories which promote acceptance, love, unity and singing and dancing for all!”

It turns out that the author of the Newsweek article is gay himself!

He wrote a response (to Kristen's article, as well as to others who criticized him) and here it is:

Out Of Focus
The Internet is attacking me for my essay on 'Promises, Promises.' But can we steer the debate back to where it belongs?

By Ramin Setoodeh | Newsweek Web Exclusive
May 10, 2010

From: http://www.newsweek.com/id/237758

When Sean Hayes, from Will & Grace, made his Broadway debut in Promises, Promises playing a heterosexual man, the New York Times theater review included these lines: "his emotions often seem pale to the point of colorlessness ... his relationship with [his costar Kristin] Chenoweth feels more like that of a younger brother than a would-be lover and protector." This, to me, is code: it's a way to say that Hayes's sexual orientation is getting in the way of his acting without saying the word gay.

Instead of hiding behind double entendre and leaving the obvious unstated, I wrote an essay in the May 10 issue of NEWSWEEK called "Straight Jacket" examining why, as a society, it's often hard for us to accept an openly gay actor playing a straight character. You can disagree with me if you like, but when was the last time you saw a movie starring a gay actor? The point of my essay was not to disparage my own community, but to examine an issue that is being swept under the rug.

Immediately, a number of gay blogs picked up my essay and ran excerpts from it out of context, under the headline that I was antigay. It went viral. Chenoweth wrote a letter to NEWSWEEK calling the article “horrendously homophobic,", even though she went on to acknowledge that I am openly gay. It went even more viral. In the meantime, commenters on the Internet piled on the attacks. Many of them said they hadn't even read the original article (some of them did) but they all seemed to agree on the same point: that I was an idiot.

Over the weekend, I became the subject of a lot of vicious attacks. I received e-mails that said I will be fired, anonymous phone calls on my cell phone and a creepy letter at my home. Several blogs posted my picture, along with a link to my Twitter feed. People commented about my haircut, and that was only the beginning. I was compared to Ann Coulter and called an Uncle Tom. Someone described me as a "self-hating Arab" that should be writing about terrorism (I'm an American, born in Texas, of Iranian descent).

But what all this scrutiny seemed to miss was my essay's point: if an actor of the stature of George Clooney came out of the closet today, would we still accept him as a heterosexual leading man? It's hard to say, because no actor like that exists. I meant to open a debate—why is that? And what does it say about our notions about sexuality? For all the talk about progress in the gay community in Hollywood, has enough really changed? The answer seems obvious to me: no, it has not.

I realize this is a complicated subject matter, but the Internet sometimes has a way of oversimplfying things. My article became a straw man for homophobia and hurt in the world. If you were pro-gay, you were anti-NEWSWEEK. Chenoweth's argument that gay youth need gay role models is true, but that's not what I was talking about. I was sharing my honest impression about a play that I saw. If you don't agree with me, I'm more than happy to hear opposing viewpoints. But I was hoping to start a dialogue that would be thoughtful—not to become a target for people who twisted my words. I'm not a conservative writer with an antigay agenda. I don't hate gay people or myself. As for my haircut, I don't know what to say. Should I change it?