J
onathan Larson wrote Rent, his
musical about Aids, because he
thought nothing else mattered.
He had lost friends and their story
became an award-winning fixture
on Broadway. He never saw the
accolades. Larson died aged 35 of an
aneurysm caused by an undiagnosed
genetic disorder on the day that Rent
was set to premiere. Another musical
of his, the autobiographical Tick, Tick ...
Boom!, told of his life before Rent, the
title referring to the clock and bomb
sound Larson heard in his head, which
he took to mean that life was short.
Like any musical worth a babysitter,
Tick, Tick... Boom! is gripping and sad
with catchy songs — a Les Mis for the
New York City gay scene of the early
1990s. In a film based on the show,
Andrew Garfield, 38, plays Larson, and
I speak to the LA-born, Surrey-raised
star over Zoom. (He is in Calgary, shoot-
ing a series about Mormons that, he
says, will not please Mormons at all.)
He is engaging company, a rare
young actor with no qualms about
speaking his mind. Most wait until their
pension years before offering up opin-
ions, but he has a questioning person-
ality that veers from funny to earnest
— warning: contains sporadic poetry
reading — as he opens up about his
mother’s death, the “dysfunction” ofMark Zuckerberg and “ugliness” of cor-
porate Hollywood.
First, though, a hot button subject,
which came up for Garfield when he
played Prior Walter in the National
Theatre’s staging of the Aids drama
Angels in America in 2017. Walter is gay,
Garfield is not, and such casting risks
outrage from those who believe gay
roles should go to gay actors. Social
media is the new voice in the casting
room. Producers are fearful they will
be hanged, drawn and hashtagged.
Garfield says the debate is different
now: “People’s consciousness is in a
tremendous flux. Prevailing ideas are
changing. They are widening.” Garfield
is referring to the argument straight
actors often use to justify playing gay
roles — that by bringing their star
power to a project they get a message
into the mainstream. He says: “There’d
be a lot of different considerations now
between me and Tony Kushner [who
wrote Angels] about transmitting the
play to as many people as possible, and
if I’m the right person to do it. I don’t
know what the result would be.”
From Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhap-
sody to Kate Winslet in Ammonite, the
biggest gay film roles of recent years
have gone to straight actors, or actors
who we think are straight: Benedict
Cumberbatch’s Alan Turing; TaronFILM
Egerton’s Elton John; James Corden in
The Prom. Since 2005 and Brokeback
Mountain more than 30 such roles have
been nominated for Oscars, with none
played by openly LGBTQ+ actors.
Pressure is mounting. This year the
writer Russell T Davies, talking about his
Channel 4 Aids drama It’s A Sin, which
only featured gay actors in gay roles,
said, “You wouldn’t black someone up
— authenticity leads to joyous places.”
Would Garfield be wary of going for
the role of Prior now? “I go back to
what Tony said,” he explains. “He said
that if we only play who we are and
how we identify in our real lives, it’s the
death of empathetic imagination. That
is not a good thing. And not only for
artists — it’s one of the things the world
needs most right now.”
Another issue is one Winslet raised:it is gay actors being afraid to come out
because they fear Hollywood won’t cast
them as it’s difficult to sell gay actors to
conservative markets.
“But what is Hollywood?” Garfield
asks mischievously. “Hollywood is mar-
ket forces. What is or is not going to
make money. That is the guiding light.
It’s a business and so there’s fear, a fear
of losing money, and it’s ugly. We’re so
silly, human beings.” He pauses, to take
off his jumper, because he has got
heated. “The idea that someone’s sexu-
ality could be a threat is insane.”
Garfield has been suspicious of Hol-
lywood since he first encountered the
blockbuster machine in his two Spider-
Man films almost a decade ago. “I
thought I could talk on a big screen to
millions of young boys. That I could
show a kid who is struggling with both
extraordinariness and ordinariness
where those two things meet. It’s our
responsibility to tell stories so that
something can happen in young people
to wake them up into living in a full
way. I’d figured out how to get soul into
that film, not in a boring way — in a fun
Spider-Man way.”
And it didn’t happen? “It never
happens to the extent I would like ...
There were people serving different
masters. But I don’t think any artist is
ever satisfied.”If we only play who we
are, it’s the death of
empathetic imagination.
That is not a good thing
‘I’m still a mess’ Andrew Garfield, the
self-aware star of Tick, Tick ... BoomCAN STRAIGHTS
PLAY GAY ROLES?
Andrew Garfield saw Hollywood from the inside as
Spider-Man — it taught him to speak up for what
he believes in, starting with acting’s most
heated debate. Interview by
Jonathan Dean
NETFLIX