Film legend Dame Judi Dench now claims that her character in the box office bomb musical movie Cats is transgender.
Dench was thrilled to play the part usually performed by a man. But, most notably, she told the left-wing gay publication Out Magazine that she thinks her version of Old Deuteronomy is a trans-cat.
“I kind of call it ‘trans-Deuteronomy,'” she exclaimed. “[That’s] the part for me, you know.”
Dench plays “Old Deuteronomy,” the leader of a tribe of feral cats called the Jellicles. In the scene, the character appears before the tribe to choose one cat to ascend to the “Heaviside Layer” to attain a new life.
In the past, Old Deuteronomy has been played by a male actor, but for Tom Hooper’s film adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Weber hit musical, Dench furred up for the role.
Dench also told Out that she was happy to get the role after having to drop out of a 1981 stage production of the show due to a problem with her Achilles tendon.
“It’s glorious to have been included in [the film], I must say. [It was] nerve-wracking because all I can hear is Brian Blessed all the time in the production that I wasn’t able to be in,” said Dench, referring to the actor who played her film role in the 1981 stage production.
The actress popular for her roles in the James Bond film franchise was happy that the producers of the movie cast her to be “an aged cat.”
Dench may not want to celebrate her film role too loudly. Thus far, Cats has been a huge bomb opening to only $6.5 million in ticket sales, far, far less than the already abysmal $15 million projections.
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