“Real Time” host Bill Maher introduced a “New Rule” on his show Friday wherein Hollywood casting directors need to stop listening to woke “casting police.”
Maher contextualized his segment around the new trend of people apologizing for, or being called to apologize for roles “they call appropriation,” he said in a clip shared on YouTube. He started with the example of James Franco being asked to play Fidel Castro, as announced by Deadline in August.
John Leguizamo spoke out against Franco’s casting, calling for people to boycott the film because Franco is not Latino, Maher explained, before noting that Leguizamo is Colombian-American but has played a Venetian in the adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Maher noted several other roles Leguizamo portrayed that did not fit his ethnicity, but he played them anyway.
“Appropriating sounds like an unforgivable sin until you remember that’s what acting is. That’s why acting jobs are called roles,” Maher told the audience. He used several examples of straight, white male actors playing gay and trans roles, for which they were once celebrated.
He noted that many actors choose to keep their private lives private in order to allow the audience to suspend their reality while watching them on television and in movies. Having only gay actors play gay roles would force many men and women to reveal parts of their lives they don’t want to public involved with, Maher argued. (RELATED: ‘All They Do Is Virtue Signal’: Daily Caller’s Kay Smythe Says Politicians Are ‘Failed Actors’ Seeking Popularity)
“[Actors] try to keep their private lives private so we don’t think of their real lives when we see them in a movie that attempts to transport us in to a different world,” Maher stated. “Could you really look at this actress now and not think of the trial. Should she only play bed shitters now?” Maher continued, showing a photograph of actress Amber Heard on the stand during her headline-making trial against her ex-husband actor Johnny Depp.
“And it is frankly typical of so much wokeness that doesn’t build on liberalism, it undoes it,” Maher noted. You can watch his full comments on his new rule, “F*ck tha Casting Police” here: