Actor Benedict Cumberbatch said he’s “had to apologize” numerous times for playing a nonbinary character as a gag in the movie “Zoolander 2.”
Variety reported on how Cumberbatch, best known for playing Doctor Strange in Marvel movies and the titular detective in “Sherlock,” cringed at having played a non-binary fashion model named “All” in the “Zoolander” sequel.
In the 2016 comedy, the two main characters, played by Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, meet the character named “All” and immediately have questions. The character, with shaved eyebrows and an androgynous appearance, is asked by Stiller’s character, “So… are you, like, a male model or a female model?”
“All is not defined by binary constructs,” Cumberbatch’s character replies.
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“That’s cool, I don’t like labels either,” Wilson’s character says. “But I think he’s asking, ‘Do you have a hot dog or a bun? You have a wiener or a ‘vageener’?”
This and other awkward moments featuring this character were condemned by liberal critics.
“I’ve had to apologize for that quite a lot. It’s a difficult one to talk about,” Cumberbatch told Variety. “I love that group of people and it was the chance to sort of be part of something [in Zoolander] that the first time around was iconic and I was a huge fan of. But it got complicated and it got misunderstood and I upset people. I respect that, so I probably wouldn’t do that again now.”
As Variety noted, a petition was circulated at the time and had gathered 25,000 supporters calling to “Boycott ‘Zoolander 2’ for its offensive representation of non-binary individuals!”
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“Cumberbatch’s character is clearly portrayed as an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals,” the petition said. “This is the modern equivalent of using blackface to represent a minority.”
The petition went on to argue, “If the producers and screenwriters of Zoolander wanted to provide social commentary on the presence of trans/androgyne individuals in the fashion industry, they could have approached models like Andreja Pejic to be in the film. By hiring a cis actor to play a non-binary individual in a clearly negative way, the film endorses harmful and dangerous perceptions of the queer community at large.”
Variety also recalled when Cumberbatch said in 2022 of the part, “In this era, my role would never be performed by anybody other than a trans actor.”
He added, “But I remember at the time not thinking of it necessarily in that regard, and it being more about two dinosaurs, two heteronormative clichés not understanding this new diverse world. But it backfired a little bit.”
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