Justin Theroux: Zoolander 2 trans criticism “hurts my feelings”
Androgynous character All has drawn fire from the transgender community
Justin Theroux has hit back at complaints that Zoolander 2 is offensive to the transgender community.
The latest trailer for the Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson comedy shows androgynous character All, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Stiller and Wilson’s characters ask All if they are a “male or female model” and if they “have a hot dog or a bun.”
A petition calling for a boycott of the film has garnered over 20,000 signatures. It claims that Zoolander 2 contains an “offensive representation of non-binary individuals” and calls Cumberbatch’s character “the modern equivalent of using blackface to represent a minority.”
“By hiring a cis actor to play a non-binary individual in a clearly negative way, they film endorses harmful and dangerous perceptions of the queer community at large,” it continues.
“Our target is not, and never was, to disenfranchise anyone,” Theroux told TheWrap.
“I don’t even know what to make of it, because it hurts my feelings in a way. I take great care in the jokes I write, and the umbrage being taken is out of the context of the scene,” he continued. “I wish people would see the movie first. Satire is a thing that points out the idiots, and we went through it on ‘Tropic Thunder’ with the ‘R’ word.”
Tropic Thunder came under fire in 2008 after Robert Downey Jr.’s character used the term “retard.”
“The goal was not to mock or be cruel to the mentally challenged,” Theroux explained, “but exalt in the stupidity of people who use that word. I’m all for letting words be ugly when the target is correct.”
Watch the trailer for Zoolander 2 below:
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