John Leguizamo on ‘To Wong Foo’ legacy 25 years after cult film’s debut
The actor and comedian John Leguizamo is among a rising list of entertainers who wants transgender roles in movies and tv to be performed by trans actors — on the least for the foreseeable future.
“We now gather got to make amends. Anyone can play something, nonetheless the playing discipline is now now not intelligent that plan,” Leguizamo, 56, told NBC News. “Now not all americans is allowed to play the whole lot, so till we gather to that online page online, it’s severe for trans actors to assemble of project to behave.”
Leguizamo made the remarks ahead of the 25th anniversary of the scramble queen cult classic “To Wong Foo, Thanks for All the issues! Julie Newmar.” Within the 1995 comedy, Leguizamo plays Chi-Chi Rodriguez, notion to be one of three scramble queens embarking on a corrupt-country avenue day out till their automobile breaks down in the fictional city of Snydersville, Nebraska. While by no plan entirely articulated in the film, Chi-Chi has broadly been perceived as transgender by longtime followers of the film — and Leguizamo himself.
If the film’s casting were on the present time, though, Leguizamo would desire a transgender Latina playing the down-and-out scramble ingenue.
“Latin americans can gather to soundless be playing Latin americans — no more brown face,” he said. “Ample of that, and the the same thing in the LGBTQ neighborhood, identical thing. There are actors in the market who’re out that ought to be playing those roles.”
With LGBTQ representation in mainstream media a rarity in the ‘90s, “To Wong Foo” — and the personality of Chi-Chi in particular — made an indelible label.
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“It was a extremely efficient thing. I gather an complete bunch fan mail from LGBTQ younger americans telling me how my personality helped them arrive out to their of us,” Leguizamo said. “They did now not feel love they were considered, so that was a supreme reward from the film.”
The transgender actress Candis Cayne — who performed a competition contestant in the film’s final scene and was the “scramble mentor” of the tip-billed enormous title, Patrick Swayze — reflected on that significance.
“Chi-Chi was a trans icon, nonetheless she also confirmed us that elated males and trans females can both compose and work in scramble aspect by aspect, and that those relationships are symbiotic,” she explained.
As for the film more broadly, Cayne, who was “searching to make it substantial in Current York Metropolis” as a scramble queen when she was requested to audition for “To Wong Foo,” said, “It was truly the first time that queendom had been profiled by mainstream Hollywood.”
Cayne’s blueprint in the film earned her admission into the actors union, paving the plan for her groundbreaking blueprint in the ABC drama “Soiled Spirited Money,” making her the first transgender actress to play a ordinary transgender personality in primetime tv.
‘We’re now now not equal till we’re all equal’
Leguizamo said the message on the center of “To Wong Foo” — which reveals that substantial city liberals and heart-America conservatives can now now not finest coexist nonetheless also learn from every diversified — is one which soundless resonates on the present time.
“America is more healthy after we’re all united,” he said. “It be known as the United States of America, intelligent? You stumble on that in this film. You stumble on that after we gather alongside, we’re stronger than after we’re divided.”
Leguizamo, who has embraced his blueprint as an LGBTQ ally, is now writing a musical about transgender immigrants at Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention camps alongside the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I realized with my inform and replacement of followers, I’m in a position to give inform to the inclined,” he said. “I expertise the usage of my inform to make the arena a closer online page online for all americans, ‘online page online off we’re now now not equal till we’re all equal.”
And in his drawing near musical, he said he’s “guaranteeing that the particular person playing trans is a trans particular person, so we are in a position to make it legit, make it proper.”
“That honest appropriate wants to be carried out intelligent now,” he added.