Michelle Rodriguez on playing a trans character: ‘You can’t really argue with me because I’m you’
Michelle Rodriguez is under fire for portraying a very odd, and sorta controversial character in the upcoming film [re]Assignment, where she plays a cisgender male who is forced to become a woman by an evil doctor, Sigourney Weaver, who wants “to teach him a lesson.”
Rodriguez plays an assassin named Frank Kitchen. After killing the brother of a brilliant but deranged surgeon, Kitchen is captured and awakes to find himself unwillingly turned into a woman.
The premise alone garnered backlash from the queer community for being insensitive towards transgender people, who said the medical procedure should not be used as a sensationalistic plot device. It was also called transphobic and exploitative.
In a series of accompanying photos, Rodriguez posed while revealing her chest binder, armpit hair, and a full beard that was applied temporarily. The caption read:
Heheheh at TIFF promoting ‘TomBoy A Revengers Tale’ producers are convinced the new movie title should be re-assignment but I’ll stick to the title I signed on to shoot… ‘Tomboy’. It’s in the B Movie genre, a culture shock pic, shot like a ‘film Noir’ graphic novel. I played a male assassin for four days in the movie, boy was that beard itchy. Then out revenge, a twisted Doctor played by Sigourney Weaver decides to take my character’s manhood away with a sex change to teach him a lesson. I never felt more like a woman than when I played a man. For the rest of the film I was a man stuck in a newly operated sex changed body. I had fake boob covers to look like man implants & I wore a fake hairy ‘mangina’ which you can’t really see cause they made it so hairy. In retrospect I’m I glad took the plunge, the industry seems to be running low on edgy creativity & ‘real take a chance’ controversy, sometimes it makes me want to scream, instead I did what I always do when I’m bored with the ‘status quo’, I shot crazy b movie Indy to express my frustration. I wish I had more than a few weeks to prepare for this flic, I would have gained a lot more weight, & we would have made some hairy arms to match my Mediterranean look. I feel that my skinny build sometimes comes off hermaphoditic in the film, especially when you add the crazy male chest for the nude sequences. Lol hope y’all will enjoy the flic sometime, when we sell it of course… It’s interesting to say the least.
“Sorry Michelle, girl you gotta know I love you, but this movie sounds insensitive as f–k to the transgender community,” one commenter wrote. “Turning their very real struggle into a fun little tour for you and a cheap shock value movie.”
Rodriguez, addressed the ongoing controversy in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday.
“I’m bisexual. I do guys. I do girls. You can’t really argue with me because I’m you. So if I do a movie, I’d never do a movie with the intention of offending anybody in the LGBT community because I’m a part of it,” she said.
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