Chris Pine says he’s “proud” of the “Star Trek” franchise for making history this year by revealing that one of its most iconic characters is gay.
In a Thursday interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 36-year-old actor, who’s played Captain Kirk in the last three “Star Trek” installments, applauded the decision to depict Hikaru Sulu as a gay man in “Star Trek Beyond,” which hit theaters in July.
“It’s about f**ing time,” Pine said. “The fact that there’s still a conversation about it means that there’s still room to go in terms of it being normalized.” The “Star Trek” franchise, he added, “doesn’t share in the kind of cynicism and negativity that some of these other superhero films do.”
Pine’s co-star, John Cho, told Australia’s Herald Sun in June that he would be playing Sulu as a gay man who is raising a daughter with a same-sex partner in “Star Trek Beyond.”
The film’s director, Justin Lin, and co-writer Simon Pegg told Cho they’d chosen to depict Sulu as gay in honor of George Takei, who originated the role in the 1960s television series and six subsequent films. Takei, 79, came out in 2005 and has become an outspoken LGBT rights advocate in recent years.
Still, the original Sulu wasn’t thrilled by the tribute. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Takei argued that having his character in a same-sex relationship was “a twisting” of what “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry had intended.
When Takei appeared at a 50th anniversary “Star Trek” convention in August, he remained critical of what he called “a whisper of a scene” while pointing to other movies that “are dealing with LGBT issues much more profoundly,” CNET News reported.
Pine acknowledged that criticism in his interview, noting, “My only rebuttal to George Takei — no matter what kind of creative differences he had about Sulu being gay, and I can understand his creative differences — is the fact that our job is to make people feel less alone.”
He then added, “If there’s one kid in Middle America who feels any amount of self-loathing because he feels different, or is being bullied because he feels different or looks different or sounds different, if our film can give him solace and make him or her feel less alone, then abso-effin-loutely we should do it all the time, every day of the week.”
Well said, Chris!
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