Jeremy Strong Understands Criticism Of Straight Actors Playing Gay: “It’s Absolutely Valid”

Jeremy Strong has chimed in on the long-running discourse around casting straight actors in gay roles.

After portraying Donald Trump‘s gay mentor Roy Cohn in The Apprentice, premiering Oct. 11 in theaters, the Golden Globe winner said he thinks LGBTQ actors should be “given more weight” when it comes to casting LGBTQ roles.

“Yes, it’s absolutely valid,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m sort of old fashioned, maybe, in the belief that, fundamentally, it’s [about] a person’s artistry, and that great artists, historically, have been able to, as it were, change the stamp of their nature. That’s your job as an actor. The task, in a way, is to render something that is not necessarily your native habitat. … While I don’t think that it’s necessary [for gay roles to be played by gay performers], I think that it would be good if that were given more weight.”

Written by Gabe Sherman, The Apprentice charts a young Trump’s (Sebastian Stan) ascent to power through a Faustian deal with the influential right-wing lawyer and political fixer Cohn. The movie also stars Martin Donovan as Fred Trump Sr., and Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump.

Cohn’s sexuality was an open secret, despite playing a crucial role in the Lavender Scare of the 1950s McCarthy era. Although he denied his diagnosis, Cohn died of AIDS-related complications in 1986.

Strong added, “What I do feel, whoever plays any part ever, is that you have to take these things as seriously as you take your own life, and it is not a game, and that these people and their struggles and the experiences you’re trying to render are not a plaything. If I didn’t believe that I could understand on some deep level his anguish and turmoil and his need, and the sort of Gordian knot that every character has but Roy has particularly — if I didn’t believe that I could understand it or connect to it in a way that is faithful or voracious, I wouldn’t have done it. I certainly don’t do these things just for my own self-aggrandizement.”

After the film had its world premiere at Cannes Film Festival in May, where it received an 11-minute ovation, Trump’s campaign issued a cease-and-desist attempting to stop the film from screening in the US amid the 2024 presidential election. But the letter appears to have been fruitless as the title went on to screen at Telluride Film Festival in August.