Julianne Moore opened up about her critically-acclaimed role in 2010's The
Kids Are All Right, which was released exactly 10 years ago on Thursday,
revealing that she likely would not have taken the role today.
Moore,
59, stars as Jules, a lesbian who, along with her partner Nic (Annette Bening)
have raised two kids (Josh Hutcherson, Mia Wasikowska) together from a sperm
donor (Mark Ruffalo), as their lives are complicated when the donor comes into
their lives.
While the film was praised by the LGBTQ community, there was
backlash as well for two straight actresses playing queer roles, with Moore
telling Variety that she thinks about it a lot.
'I’ve thought
about that a lot. Here we were, in this movie about a queer family, and all of
the principal actors were straight. I look back and go, “Ouch. Wow,"' she
began.
'I don’t know that we would do that today, I don’t know that we
would be comfortable. We need to give real representation to people, but I’m
grateful for all of the experiences that I’ve had as an actor because my job
is to communicate a universality of experience to the world,' she added.
'The idea that, rather than othering people, we’re saying we’re
all the same. Our humanity is shared,' Moore continued.
The
film was directed by Lisa Cholodenko, a member of the LGBTQ community, who
co-wrote the script with Stuart Blumberg, with Cholodenko, who said it was a
'super interesting argument' about casting straight actors in LGBTQ roles.
'I tend to err on the side of, "It’s make believe," and it’s of
the discretion of the director who’s the most compelling for that job. So, I
don’t think it’s mutually exclusive. While I want to promote gay people
representing gay people, trans people, all the rest, queer people — it’s also
a commercial prospect. It’s all those things,' Cholodenko said.
She
added that when she cast Moore and Bening, 'I could feel their gayness. It
didn’t feel phony to me. I didn’t feel like I was putting somebody in an
outfit and asking them to parade as something that was false.'
She
added there was a 'conversation about going out to Jodie Foster,' who said via
email she didn't remember getting an offer and said she was busy doing
reshoots on her directorial effort The Beaver, which was released in
2011.
Cholodenko had started writing The Kids Are All Right in 2004,
coming off her critically-acclaimed 2003 film Laurel Canyon, when she ran into
Stuart Blumberg (Thanks For Sharing) at Cafe 101 in Hollywood.
'Lisa
told me that she and her then-partner were trying to have a kid with a sperm
donor, and she was thinking that would be a cool idea for a movie,' Blumberg
said.
'I said, "Wow, that’s weird. In college I was a sperm
donor, and I always wondered if I have kids and what would happen if they
tried to find me." Then the lightbulb just went off,'
The film was a modest hit at the box office, earning $34.7 million
from a $4 million budget, earning rave reviews and racking up awards and
nominations.
The Kids Are All Right was nominated for four Oscars,
including Best Picture, with both Bening and Ruffalo getting nominated along
with Cholodenko and Blumberg for their original screenplay.
