In what some are calling another another example of Hollywood hypocrisy, Bridgerton star Golda Rosheuvel says she was told by a lesbian director not to come out as gay.
“How come I can be out privately to my family, to my friends, every day, but there’s something different about being professionally out, and publicly out? Why is that different? I don’t understand,” Rosheuvel said during a Wednesday interview on the Just for Variety podcast.
“We were talking about being out, and proud, and representation, and whether I should say I was gay in interviews,” the actress explained. “And it was an absolute, no. ‘You absolutely shouldn’t do that. It could or it would ruin your career as an actor.'”
Rosheuvel, who plays Queen Charlotte on Netflix’s Bridgerton, added that she found the advice especially confusing, because it was coming from a lesbian director, who was out herself.
“Her being out as a female director, as a lesbian director, I was like, ‘I don’t understand this advice.’ It blew my mind,” she said.
“I would rather lose a job than not be true to who I am. I’d rather not work in an industry that doesn’t accept me than not be true to who I am. It wasn’t just how I was raised,” Rosheuvel added.
“This is the thing that blows my mind as well, like, I pretend to be other people, [it’s] what I do for a living,” the actress laughed. “I’ve played straight roles, and I’ve loved every single minute of it.”
Rosheuvel’s disclosure of what her lesbian director once told her is another example of how the entertainment industry does not practice what it preaches.
Ellen DeGeneres’ sitcom Ellen was cancelled in 1997 after she came out, and another attempt at a sitcom was cancelled after just one season.
Last year, Titanic and Avatar star Kate Winslet said she knows “at least four” actors who are “hiding their sexuality” due to “homophobia” that exists in Hollywood.
In 2017, gay actor Colton Haynes called out Hollywood for its homophobia, saying directors and producers focus too much on gay actors’ personal lives while casting. In 2015, actress Amber Heard claimed it is too difficult being bisexual in Hollywood.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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