The acting of Celie
I have been following
the case of Seyi Omooba, the actress or rather the actor as I have noticed the
gender-specificity appears to have been taken out of the noun for the acting
profession. She was to have taken the lead role of Celie in a stage production
of The Colour Purple
until it was found that sometime in the past written view on Facebook that
called into question her ability to take on the role.
Apparently, the role
of Celie does have some same-sex attraction and it is left to the director to
decide how that is interpreted and the actor to give that the best expression possible
that the audience will suspend belief and be absorbed in the depiction and quality
of the performance. That is what actors do, it does not make actors the roles
they play in real life.
The mind of Seyi
Ms Omooba, however,
wears her religion on her sleeve and that appears to come before her vocation
for which she was by all terms fully qualified to do, for that is why she auditioned
and was selected to play Celie. She was not minded to play the part as she had
said on a Facebook post that, “I do not believe you can be born gay, and I
do not believe homosexuality is right, though the law of this land has made it
legal doesn't mean its [sic] right.” [BBC News: Seyi
Omooba: Actress sacked over anti-gay post loses legal fight]
Now, Ms Omooba is
entitled to her views and beliefs, we live in a free country, what she believes
to be right is her prerogative and that is fine by me, even if those views
question the essence of my being and that of the broader LGBTI+ community, or
that of any other person. Prejudices abound, what matters is the ability
despite our persuasion, that difference exists and that is the way the world is.
We can all live our lives happily respecting that.
The princess throws a
strop
Having expressed
those views way back in 2014, they had not changed when she took on the role of
Celia and Ms Omooba was going to depict the role within the constraints of
her worldview making no allowances for either directorial discretion or that of
the author of The
Colour Purple. At which point it was decided she was incompatible with the role
and the theatre seeking an amicable settlement offered her unconditionally full
salary to walk away, but she was not going quietly.
She took the case to
tribunal seeking substantial redress and compensation, supported by a
fundamentalist religious organisation founded by her father and has lost.
It has not escaped my
notice that the name Ọmọọba is Yoruba for the child of a king, suggesting prince or
princess, we still have gender roles in royal titles. Her father is both a
religious and community leader who has been honoured with an MBE for his
community work whilst being strident homophobic, but we can separate the
issues, it does not make him any less worthy of honour.
The choices she made
His princess, fully
imbued with the teachings of her father needed to work in a rather different
environment that offers equality of opportunity and the acceptance of
diversity, but chose to use her inability to adapt to a different environment
to play the victim of discrimination, thankfully, she could not play the race card
because it is very likely the role that once went to Whoopi Goldberg in the 1985
film directed by Steven Spielberg and had Quincy Jones as one of the producers
would most definitely have gone to another African American.
This is what Ms
Omooba had to say on the website of Christian Concern, “When I received the
email that I was going to be dropped from the cast, I was heartbroken. The
agency told me that I would receive financial compensation, but I am not in
this for the money. For me it’s not about the money or my face – it was about
telling and expressing Celie’s story, as I interpret it as a performer, because
that is what I love to do.”
“Yet the theatre
and the agency gave me the choice of either losing my career or renouncing my
faith. I could not do this, not even to save the career that I love.” [Christian Concern:
Seyi Omooba]
No, sweet child, you
cannot unilaterally interpret a role divergent from what the director requires
the role to be. Celie’s story was written in 1982, was depicted on film in 1985
and there is a musical remake to be released in 2023, society and norms have so
moved on. [Wikipedia:
The Colour Purple (Film)]
The choices they made
Yet, much as this
might have been a career-boosting opportunity, no one was asking you to choose
between your faith or your career, you made that choice. Your career was not
ending, you created the circumstances for questioning if you were suitable for
the role and whether you could be represented by your management agency. As the
lawyer for the agency stated at tribunal, “Her comments had so adversely
affected her future employability that her contract with Global was ‘an empty
vessel.’” [The
Telegraph: Actress Seyi Omooba loses tribunal claim over her dismissal from The
Color Purple]
It would appear
rather than for the common good, you took the selfish and unchristianly stance
to jeopardise the fortunes of the theatre ready to compensate you and the
management agency about to lose clients because of what you chose to represent;
prejudice, bigotry, entitlement, and intransigence.
The opportunity she
did not embrace
Her troubles began
when in 2019, after she was announced as the lead for The Colour Purple, a
member of the cast of Hamilton, Aaron Lee Lambert asked on
Twitter, with a caption of her Facebook post, “Do you still stand by this
post? Or are you happy to remain a hypocrite? Seeing as you’ve now been
announced to be playing an LGBTQ character, I think you owe your LGBTQ peers an
explanation. Immediately.”
Ms Omooba did not
answer to the issue for months and the theatre seeing the public relations
disaster brewing had to take measures to both save the production and their
enterprise when it became apparent that she was not ready to temper her views.
In the comments that followed the tweet, it was revealed she had recently
refused to appear in a pride video along with members of the cast of another
production she featured in. Besides, she had before appeared in a concert
version of The Colour Purple.
She had no case, just
trouble
Laid out in those
terms, it was unlikely Ms Omooba had any intention of playing or depicting any
of the LGBTQ aspects of the Celie character, one cannot suggest what presumably
chaste component she would have brought to give the role a meaningful
interpretation in consonance with the original writing.
The tribunal ruling
against her demands for compensation for loss of earnings, future losses and
reputational damage concluded, “If there is damage to her reputation, it
was not caused by being dropped from the production but by an unconnected
person's tweeting... of her Facebook post and the outcry resulting from that.”
[BBC
News: Seyi Omooba: Actress sacked over anti-gay post loses legal fight]
We all have to live
with others
My takeaway from this
case is simple, you are free to have whatever views you espouse, but the moment
you publish them, they are on the record for a public and global audience that
extends well beyond the community that would fully agree with our opinions that
it is necessary that the expression of such views do not become a future
impediment to progress.
Bigotry, prejudice,
hypocrisy, lies, unkindness, hate, inhumanity no matter how reasoned our
positions are do not win laurels, they eventually become burdens unintended and
consequential.
Religious intransigence
in a liberal and secular environment is the harbinger of notoriety and personal
grief. Your beliefs exist within constructs, never in a vacuum. Ms Omooba
accepted the construct that homosexuality is legal, and much as she could
comment on the rightness or the wrongness of the law, she chose a moralistic dimension
that set her apart from the profession and broader society that had made
accommodations for living and let live, it became her undoing.
Within fundamental
Christian circles, Ms Omooba might be lauded and celebrated for her courage and
integrity, that is probably where she can ply her trade, in the cohort of those
who believe the same way as she does. However, if she needs an audience to her
art and talent beyond that setting, the change will have to happen to her, though
she might well think it is the society that needs to bend to her will. That is her
hill if she chooses to die on it.
