Latest news with #transrepresentation
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
People Are Begging Zoe Saldaña To 'Read The Room' After She Declared That Her 'Emilia Pérez' Oscar Is 'Trans' And 'Goes By They/Them'
It's been three months since Zoe Saldaña memorably took home the 2025 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in Emilia Pérez. The divisive musical, directed by Jacques Audiard, follows a transgender Mexican cartel leader named Emilia Pérez (played by Karla Sofía Gascón) as she seeks help from a lawyer (played by Zoe) to obtain gender-affirming surgery. Emilia keeps her transition a secret from her wife and kids, posing as the aunt of her pre-transition self. The film sparked backlash for a number of reasons, though one of the biggest talking points has undoubtedly been its portrayal of the trans experience. The LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD branded the film a 'step backwards for trans representation,' arguing that it 'recycles the trans stereotypes, tropes, and clichés of the not-so-distant past.' Related: 12 Celebs Who Came Out At A Young Age, And 13 Who Came Out Way Later In Life Months after its release, the backlash against Emilia Pérez grew further when the cast notably made no mention of trans rights as they accepted their controversial Oscar wins — despite the fact that the entire plot of the film centres around a trans woman's experience, and given the current terrifying political climate for trans folks. And with this in mind, people are now once again disappointed that Zoe — who still hasn't spoken out at length about trans rights — stated that her Oscar statuette 'goes by they/them.' Related: 18 Celebrities Who Called Out Other Celebs On Social Media For Bad, Problematic, Or Just Plain Mean Behavior This week, at the LA premiere of her new movie Elio, Zoe reflected on her Oscar win, saying, 'We have it in my office and my Oscar is gender fluid,' before adding that it's "trans.' Zoe's comments quickly went viral on X, where several users begged her to 'read the room.' 'Nobodys got time for this right now Zoe,' read one viral post with over 3.8 million views. Twitter: @egeofanatolia / Jeff Kravitz / FilmMagic 'funny cause she completely omitted any mention of the trans community during her acceptance speech,' someone wrote. 'had the whole press tour and many award show platforms to say something, ANYTHING about the attacks on trans people and this is what she comes up with months after her big (undeserved) oscar win. boo tomato boo,' another user echoed. 'Trans people: we need help the government is trying to kill us, please stand up for us in a meaningful way. Zoe Saldaña: My trophy is an enby,' one user quipped, while someone on Reddit shared, 'She said this but said nothing about trans rights during her acceptance speech. Oof.' Yikes. Let me know what you think in the comments. More on this People Are Furious Over Zoe Saldaña's Response To A Mexican Journalist Telling Her That They Were Hurt By 'Emilia Pérez's' Portrayal Of Their CountryLeyla Mohammed · March 3, 2025 'Emilia Pérez' Is Being Called Out After None Of Its Oscar Winners Mentioned Trans Rights In Their Acceptance SpeechesStephanie Soteriou · March 3, 2025 "Emilia Pérez" Just Earned A Bunch Of Oscar Nominations — Here's Why I'm WorriedMychal Thompson · Jan. 24, 2025 Also in Celebrity: If You Get 20/30 On This Difficult '90s Music Quiz, Then You Honestly Know Your Stuff!!! Also in Celebrity: 17 Actors Who Said "No" To Nudity And Sex Scenes Out Of Respect For Their Partners, Families, Religion, And More Also in Celebrity: Here Are 10 Celebs Who've Publicly Admitted The Reasons Why They Regret Ending Their Marriages
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Zoe Saldana slammed for calling her Emilia Perez Oscar ‘gender fluid'
Zoe Saldana has been criticized after she referred to the Academy Award she won for her role in Emilia Prez 'gender fluid'. The actress played Rita Mora Castro - a Mexican lawyer tasked with helping a cartel boss transition into a woman, and recently spoke with People about winning her first ever Academy Award for the role. In speaking about her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, she mentioned that she keeps the statue in her office and that it was 'gender fluid.' SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO She then went on to say that the award was 'trans' and goes by 'they/them.' But the admission did not go over well with the general public. Although Emilia Pérez won several awards, the movie - which features other actors including trans actress Karla Sofia Gascon and Selena Gomez - was met with massive controversy. On one hand, members of the LGBTQ community were upset at the movie's 'retrograde' portrayal of a trans woman. Others took issue with the representation of Mexican culture in the film, which featured an oversimplified take on drug violence in the nation, as well as a mixture of inaccurate accents and dialects. And then, some of Gascon's old tweets were resurfaced, which featured racist and discriminatory views against Muslims, China, and George Floyd - for which she later apologized. On top of all of this controversy laid critic's biggest issue: Not once during any award speech or discussion about the film did any of the actors involved mention the issues that plague trans people in their communities. So Saldaña saying months later that her Oscar award was 'trans,' caused a rehashing of the uproar the film faced when it first came out. 'We have Latinos/Hispanics fighting for their rights at this moment and this woman and the whole cast of Emilia Perez have been silent about their support to the community they profited from, clear as water they only cared for the award,' one X (formerly Twitter) user shared, referencing the ongoing protests taking place against ICE. Another user brought attention to how much the act felt like an afterthought. 'Yet she could barely speak about trans rights during her acceptance speeches,' they said. Others mirrored the same sentiment, with one user saying, 'She's so nasty where was this energy making the movie or during the awards campaign lol.' Some users clapped back at the choice to call her award trans. 'She's calling her Oscar… trans????' one user questioned. And finally, some users were just upset to have to see anything about the film on their timelines again. 'I thought I wouldn't have to hear about this movie again,' another X user shared. While Emilia Pérez itself may be in the best, it's no telling what its cast might say in the future to bring it back into the headlines.
Fox News
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
'Guardians of the Galaxy' star says her Oscar award is 'trans' and uses 'they/them' pronouns
Oscar-winner Zoe Saldaña told People Magazine Tuesday night that her Academy Award uses "they/them" pronouns. "We have it in my office and my Oscar is gender-fluid," Saldaña said, adding that she considers the statuette to be "trans." Earlier this year, the 46-year-old "Guardians of the Galaxy" actress won her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in the controversial musical-drama "Emilia Pérez." The film followed a Mexican cartel leader who seeks a gender-transition operation to escape his cartel past. "Emilia Pérez" also boasted having the first openly transgender Oscar nominee for Best Actress with Karla Sofía Gascón as the title character. Gascón ultimately did not win the award. Saldaña is not the first actress to claim her award was non-binary. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis referred to her first Oscar statuette as a "they/them" in honor of her transgender child Ruby during an interview on the "Today" show in 2023. "Here they are! In support of my daughter Ruby, I'm having them be a they/them," Curtis said in a video while pulling out her Oscar award. Curtis reiterated how her award was "de-gendered" in an interview for "The View" in 2024. "It lives in my house, I have de-gendered it. I have a trans daughter, and there is no genitalia on it, so it lives in my office. And I put a googly eye, for the homage to 'Everything, Everywhere, All at Once' and I put a they-them button to just make sure anyone coming in understood," Curtis said. Curtis won her first Oscar for her supporting role in the film "Everything Everywhere All at Once."
Geek Girl Authority
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Girl Authority
STAR TREK: The Trans Trill, Explained
For decades, many Trekkies have considered the Trill alien species on Star Trek to be a trans allegory. How long has this interpretation been popular? And how has the Franchise leaned into this trans representation? For this week's second Pride Month Trek Tuesday, we're examining the read that connects the trill with trans representation. Star Trek: The Next Generation The Trill were originally introduced on Star Trek: The Next Generation. In The Next Generation Season 4's 'The Host,' a Trill ambassador visits the U.S.S. Enterprise-D in order to take part in some sensitive negotiations on Peliar Zel II. This Trill symbiont, 'Odan,' was originally joined to a male host (Franc Luz). The Trill species is comprised of two kinds of life forms. There is the symbiont, a worm-like entity. These long-lived symbionts can inhabit a humanoid 'host' body. Once this has transpired, the 'joined Trill' will possess a new personality. This is the synthesis of the personalities of the symbiont and the host. RELATED: Geek Girl Authority Crush of the Week: Beverly Crusher In 'The Host,' Odan's male host and Doctor Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) became romantically entangled. However, Odan's earlier host was subsequently killed. In order to preserve the life of the symbiont, Dr. Crusher performed a procedure that transferred Odan from the original host into the body of William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes). This complicated the romantic relationship between Odan and Crusher. This was because she considered Riker to be akin to a brother to her. At the conclusion of the episode, the Odan symbiont is transferred to a new host: a woman, Kareel (Nicole Orth-Pallavicini). There is a taboo among the Trill regarding continuing a romantic relationship across different hosts. Nevertheless, Odan was willing to disregard this and continue the romance with Crusher. However, Crusher felt that the repeated changes in hosts were too much, and declined to continue the relationship. This parallels the way that a relationship will sometimes conclude when one partner transitions. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine After being introduced in The Next Generation's 'The Host,' the Trill played a major part in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This was thanks to the fact that one of the command crew members was a Trill: Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell). Sporting a new design (for both the host and the Trill), Jadzia introduced viewers to many facets of the Trill that were not explored in 'The Host.' Among other details, this included the fact that unjoined Trill symbionts swim in cave pools on the planet Trill. However, one aspect of the Trill that was introduced in The Next Generation was obviously and immediately continued in Deep Space Nine. This was the idea of a Trill symbiont moving from a male host to a female host. This was because Jadzia was a new host for the Dax symbiont. However, the previous host for the Dax symbiont was the late Curzon, a male who was the friend of Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks). RELATED: Star Trek: Tracing the Holodeck's History In an early Season 1 episode of Deep Space Nine, 'A Man Alone,' Sisko and Jadzia discuss Dax's 'transition.' In that scene, Jadzia notes that sometimes Trill friendships with other species 'don't survive the change.' Sisko says that it will be different for them, but that things are 'uncomfortable' at the moment. Jadzia suggests to Sisko that he learn to 'comfortable with his discomfort.' She continues that 'Time will do the rest.' Ultimately, Sisko's friendship with Jadzia does survive 'the change.' However, Sisko does continue to use the nickname 'Old Man' when speaking to Jadzia. While misgendering a trans person is not recommended, it's clear that this nickname is a sign of Sisko's affection for Jadzia. A Trans Allegory? There are many other scenes featuring Jadzia that are held in high regard by those Trekkies who perceive the character as a trans allegory. To cite just one more out of many examples, we can turn to the Deep Space Nine Season 2 episode 'Blood Oath.' In that episode, Jadzia reunites with a friend, Kor the Klingon (John Colicos), whom she knew decades earlier as Curzon. Initially, Kor refers to Jadzia as 'Curzon, [his] beloved old friend.' However, she corrects him by stating, 'I'm Jadzia now.' Kor immediately amends his statement: 'Jadzia, [his] beloved old friend.' For the rest of the episode, Kor refers to her as 'Jadzia' and uses her correct pronouns. These days, the scene has become something of a popular meme. It is frequently posted as evidence that even Klingons can adapt to a trans person's changing names and pronouns. RELATED: Geek Girl Authority Crush of the Week: T'Pol Furthermore, interpreting Jadzia as trans is not something that is a recent development. For proof, check out the Summer 1997 issue of Transgender Tapestry magazine. Jadzia is the featured model for the cover of Transgender Tapestry #76. The cover states: 'Star Trek, Transgender & the Final Frontier: Gene Roddenberry's Bold Journey Where No Trans Had Gone Before.' While the issue was released 28 years ago, the discussion around Jadzia remains unchanged. Sadly, and in one of the most controversial plot beats of the series, Jadzia is killed in the penultimate season of Deep Space Nine. The Dax symbiont is subsequently transferred to a new host, Ezri (Nicole de Boer). However, it is easy to speculate how any aspect of this transition might have been handled differently, especially if the series were released today. Trans Like Me Photo Cr: Paramount+ © 2021 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved. When it comes to the Trill on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, we have a trans allegory. While certain elements of the Trill stories align with the contemporary trans experience, other elements do not. However, the Franchise eventually bridged this gap thanks to Star Trek: Discovery. In the Discovery Season 3 episode 'Forget Me Not,' we're introduced to Gray Tal (Ian Alexander). Like the other joined Trill in this article, Gray has both a host and a symbiont. However, his story is somewhat complicated. When we first meet Gray, his host body is dead. The Tal symbiont has been transferred to a human, Gray's partner, human Adira Tal (Blu del Barrio). Because Adira is human, they do not join with the symbiont in the same way a Trill host would. However, Adira does continue to see visions of Gray. RELATED: 5 Star Trek Meme Source Episodes Eventually, the problem is solved by removing the Tal symbiont from Adira and transferring it to a synthetic 'golem' using the Soong method. This can easily be seen as an allegory for contemporary gender affirming procedures. However, unlike previous Trill, Gray is also textually trans. This is thanks to the fact that the humanoid Trill host is a trans man. Before joining with the Tal symbiont (and before his death), Gray had already transitioned. While trans allegory is good, making Gray textually trans (while maintaining allegorical elements) allows us to have our replicated cake and eat it too. We Get to the Future Together Hopefully, the Star Trek Franchise will continue to offer textual trans representation moving forward. As Great Bird of the Galaxy Gene Roddenberry said: 'Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms.' RELATED: Star Trek Episode Trilogy: Revisiting 'Unification' Roddenberry continued, 'If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.' These episodes of Star Trek are currently available for streaming on Paramount+. The Premise and How STAR TREK Fans Created Fanfic as We Know It Avery Kaplan is the author of several books and the Features Editor at Comics Beat. She was honored to serve as a judge for the 2021 Cartoonist Studio Prize Award and the 2021 Prism Awards. She lives in the mountains of Southern California with her partner and a pile of cats, and her favorite place to visit is the cemetery. You can also find her writing on Comics Bookcase, NeoText, Shelfdust, the Mary Sue, in many issues of PanelxPanel, and in the margins of the books in her personal library.
The Guardian
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘All of us felt like we had touched gold': What It Feels Like for a Girl, the BBC's electric coming-of-age tale
When the BBC was casting its adaptation of Paris Lees's autobiography, What It Feels Like for a Girl, it wasn't the only one wrestling with how to find the right actor to play the lead in a biopic. 'Cher did an interview,' smiles Lees, 'and she said: 'We just can't find somebody that's Cher.' I was like: 'Same, girl. I hear your struggles.' So me and Cher have been going through it.' Sitting next to Lees is the actor they went with, Ellis Howard, who you may remember as the sapling Ivan VI in HBO series Catherine the Great, but who you will never have seen being this luminous. 'In the beginning, we were looking for a trans person,' Lees says. She and Howard are sharing a Zoom screen, and it's not so much that they look similar as that they both look so cinematic, they seem to match – 'But then I just knew, the moment I saw Ellis, that this cheeky, cheeky person could do it.' Lees is known in the public eye via a series of triumphant firsts: the first trans columnist for Vogue, the first trans woman to present on Radio 1, on Channel 4. But her early life was harsh, brutal at times. She was relentlessly bullied at school for being gay, and carried the weight of her father's homophobia, expressed in both formless anger and embarrassment. She became a 'rent boy' when she was 14, but was astonished when she read, in a review of her book in Grazia that she'd been abused. 'Then I thought: 'Hang on a minute. What else would you call that?' It took me a while to realise that was abusive. When people are vulnerable, when they're told they're worthless, that they're almost half a person, you seek validation in the wrong places. It makes me incredibly sad, but it was really important to show my perspective at that time, not my perspective now.' Howard's performance is exquisite: subtle and daring, true to the fact that it would be years before the teenage sex work processed as a violation – and at the time Lees was thrilled about earning all those fivers. 'When you force people into the shadows, don't be surprised when they go fucking dark,' Howard says. 'You've got to silence the part of your brain that goes: 'I am an adult, I am a leftwing progressive.' You've got to go to a place of wonderment and curiosity.' Paris Lees's perspective in the book, which comes across as strongly on the screen, is joyful – this is an incredibly buoyant coming-of-age story, as Howard describes. 'When we were cast, all of us felt like we had touched gold, here. Whether it's our queerness, whether it's our class, whether it's the scars we've been given that make us feel so seen by it, everyone came to give it their all. How often do you get these unicorn projects, that feel so alive? It felt so rare.' Lees gives her adolescent self the pseudonym Byron, and their story opens in 2000, when things were bleak as hell for a gay teenager in a suburban, declining bit of Nottinghamshire. But this is very much not how they felt at the time: 'I definitely had a sense that things are getting better,' says Lees. 'We thought this was the end of history. I had this sense that people were living longer, wages were going up, flights were getting cheaper, they were cloning sheep. It felt like there was going to be more democracy, there was hope, there was a future. We were going to get there with gay rights. I didn't dare to believe we'd get there with the other stuff.' It's beautifully told in the drama, through friendships with divas and ketamine in nightclubs, that to be young in that era may have felt like a train wreck, but didn't feel hopeless. Howard, who was born in 1997, chips in, 'I'm nostalgic for a time I wasn't born in. Listening to P talk about the possibility of Blair and Brown, talk about a time when the NHS functioned, when school ceilings weren't caving in on people's heads, maybe I've doctored that into my brain, but I feel like I can remember a time when progress was possible. Although if I'm honest, my political awareness really began with austerity.' If homophobic bullying was a thing of the past by the 2010s, 'God, no one told my fucking school,' he says. 'No one told Norris Green in Liverpool. I was definitely ostracised. I come from a family of 'aaaah' blokes [impossible to fully convey the meaning, or mad charm of that 'aaaah' - sort of aggro and in-your-face]. I just had this unwavering sense of, I won't be bullied. You're not gonna get me. One of the reasons why I felt so seen by the book, is because this is a kid who was resilient to a mythic level. Your conditions can harden you. That was my experience of school, anyway.' The double-edged nostalgia for that time – post-industrial drudgery leavened by the smell of escape – is particularly poignant to watch now. Nobody in 2000 (trust me on this, I was there) would have predicted that 25 years later, trans people would be openly vilified in the media and drag queens castigated as perverts. It feels as if we inched forward to Scandinavia on LGBTQI+ rights, only to hurtle back to Weimar. Lees says it's more complicated than that. 'It feels like there's been a weird reversal. The public conversation in the media and politics has become very toxic. But think back: when did you ever see somebody working in Boots, that was trans, in the year 2000? When was your GP trans? When were trans people ever allowed to participate in life or society? Nobody had a job; you either had to be a prostitute or you had to not be out.' She breaks off – 'I'm a little bit guarded about this, because it's obviously relevant, but I don't want everything I do to be framed within trans activism. I hate it when people call me a trans activist. I'm not involved in activism now. Obviously, I am trans. I can't escape that. I feel like I could have died, somebody could have shot me, I could have been revived on the operating table, and the headline would still be about being trans.' Both Lees and Howard see What It Feels Like … as being an exploration of the marginalisation of poverty at least as much as it is about trans identity – if not more so. Again, it's complicated: sometimes sex and gender identity cancels out class identity, in the sense that Lees thinks 'being trans has possibly opened doors for me that wouldn't have [otherwise] been opened, to a working-class person'. Other times, the world demands that you pick a lane. 'Often times, as an actor, as a writer, I'm thinking, who am I today? Am I this scrappy working-class kid? Or am I the sensitive queer boy? And those things can't reconcile. To be swallowed in this industry, one has to present oneself in a fixed way. Who gets to live authentically is so determined by your class.' She adds: 'It's a really big part of my identity, just coming from a scarcity mindset. When you grow up and you've got nothing, that has a huge effect on how I live my life, how I think about things, my sense of internal safety and security.' 'Drama is so fucking posh,' Lees continues – not with indignation, almost amused, like she knows she speaks for pretty well everyone but the rest of the world are too polite to mention it. 'I'm just so sick of it. We love all the actors with the posh accents, I get it, but let's just make the space for some other people. It's so boring, the Jane Austenness of it all, the comedy of manners; let's have some real messy stories about real shit that happens. I love that we've got so many working-class actors on this show. The only place working-class people are represented is reality TV. I've had enough of the double-barrelled names. Working-class people are lyrical, we're just not given a voice.' And if it's a rare oversight by the class gatekeepers that this messy, exuberant story got on to TV, it also breaks out of a predictable aesthetic. 'It's so gorgeous to be in a working-class project that is extended beyond the kitchen sink, something that has so much colour and is so visually arresting,' says Howard. 'It has a cinematic feel and scale that is normally only lent to middle-class stories [but is here] given to a working-class story set in the Midlands.' The whole thing has been a white-knuckle ride from the start, Lees says, 'A bit like if they said: 'We're gonna take a picture of you naked. It's going to be displayed in public. But don't worry, we're going to get good people in, you'll have lots of creative control.' Are you ever going to be happy with that picture? This is made out of my core memories.' It has led, however, to Lees's relationship with Howard – part spirit-animal, part younger-self transformed – as well as some other beautiful performances. Both single out Laura Haddock as Byron's mother, who Lees says managed to powerfully channel her mum, without necessarily looking very alike. And the ensemble of fallen divas – endearing, spiky performances from Laquarn Lewis and Hannah Jones, was 'such a headfuck for me', Lees says, as 'there are the actual fallen divas, the real people. Then there are the characters that I created, based on them, in the book. Then there's the TV interpretations, and the actors playing them, who formed their own breakaway group. A lot of what you see on screen, that is just them fucking around.' What It Feels Like for a Girl starts 3 June, 9pm, BBC Three.
