Australian outlet Pedestrian.TV asked Star Trek: Beyond star and openly gay actor Zachary Quinto (Spock) to respond to George Takei’s negative take on the fact that the character he played in the original TV series, Sulu, was going to be made gay in the upcoming prequel. As you may recall, Takei said that while he was “delighted that there’s a gay character” that he found it to be a “twisting of [creator] Gene [Rodenberry’s] creation, to which he put in so much thought.” and that he thought it was “really unfortunate.” Takei had explained to both John Cho, who plays him in the reboot, and director Justin Lin why he didn’t want Sulu to be gay and how it was unrealistic for the character that he be closeted throughout his life essentially. They went ahead with that direction for the character despite Takei’s objections.
So Quinto has a response for Takei and while the headlines make it seem like he’s going hard against Takei’s statement, in the actual video he’s more measured and makes it about the broader point on inclusion.
As a member of the LGBT community myself I was disappointed by the fact that George was disappointed. I think any member of the LGBT community that takes issue with the normalized and positive portrayal of members of our community in Hollywood and in mainstream blockbuster cinema… I get it that he has his own personal journey and his own personal relationship with this character but, you know, as we’ve established in the first Star Trek Film in 2009 we’ve created an alternate universe and my hope is that eventually George can be strengthened by the enormously positive response especially from young people who are heartened by and inspired by this really tasteful and beautiful portrayal of something that I think is gaining acceptance and inclusion in our societies across the world and should be.
So Quinto kind of gets why Takei would object to his character having an entirely different backstory but doesn’t think it matters in the long run, which kind of goes to show how Takei got ignored in the first place. Of course it’s nice to have a gay character in Star Trek but I think they should have listened to Takei and respected his wishes instead of assuming they were doing homage to him. Takei made it clear ahead of time that wasn’t the case and it’s like they expected him to come around, that’s basically what Quino is saying. Also, I tried to go to George Takei’s twitter account to see if he’s responded to Quinto and I just got lost in all the excellent links he shares. (I searched on “Zachary” and “Quinto” on his account and there’s nothing recent.)
While searching on Twitter I found that Simon Pegg issued a lengthy response to Takei as well. Pegg defended their decision to make Sulu gay and wrote that they never suggest in the film that Sulu was ever closeted, that it’s an “alternate timeline” with “alternate details” and that “We could have introduced a new gay character, but he or she would have been primarily defined by their sexuality, seen as the ‘gay character’, rather than simply for who they are, and isn’t that tokenism?” Ok, so when Takei said he objected to his character being gay because it wasn’t right for Sulu, did they consider making a different core character gay, like Scotty?
Here’s the video and check out John Cho’s body language:
