Russell T. Davies is expecting a backlash to ‘It’s A Sin’ for only focusing on gay men.
Russell T. Davies
The 58-year-old writer’s new drama is based around a group of friends In 1981 at the start of the AIDS epidemic and he admitted he’s accepting a critical onslaught for not looking at other victims of the health crisis – but insisted that even if he had, he’d have faced further criticism.
He told The Sunday Times magazine: “I know what the response will be, because we live in 2020. The response is going to be: what about the women who died? What about the lesbians who died? What about the children who died? What about the Africans?
“And I’m rolling my eyes thinking, yes, OK, I accept that. But if I’d written that, they’d say only a lesbian could write that; only an African could write that.
“So these days there’s simply no winning!”
But Russell insisted he doesn’t worry about such criticism, having previously written sci-fi drama ‘Doctor Who’.
He added: “Well, I just ignore that. Having written about a Time Lord going to Mars.”
For ‘It’s A Sin’, Russell cast gay actors in every gay role apart from one, but he admitted doing so was a “nightmare” because he wasn’t allowed to ask about sexuality during auditions.
He said: “You’re not allowed to ask when someone comes in to audition. Which is absolutely right.
“Because the boss of Tesco isn’t allowed to ask whether the woman on the tills is a lesbian or not. And that’s a good rule. But it’s a nightmare once you’re casting.
“People always think I would know if an actor’s gay or not, but you don’t!”
The showrunner insisted such a casting decision would have been impossible when it came to his 1999 breakthrough drama ‘Queer as Folk’.
He said: “It didn’t exist as an argument because back then I kind of assumed that we couldn’t cast gay actors. There just weren’t enough out gay actors.”