◼ BUSINESS Bloomberg Businessweek June 24, 2019
25THEBOTTOMLINE Hollywoodis gettingslightlybetterabout
supportingworkbyqueerwriters,producers,andactors,butthe
LGBTQcommunityis stillvastlyunderrepresented.is wellreceivedandhasfoundanaudience,andso
suddenlyeveryonethinks,‘Well,transpeopleare
doinggreat.’Butthat’sonlyoneshow,”Canalssays.
“Lastyearwehada littleover 500 originalpiecesof
scriptedcontent.I thinkwecoulddobetter.”
ChuckJames,a foundingpartnerattalentagency
ICMPartners,saysthatinrecentmonthshe’sseen
anincreaseinrequestsforactorstofillLGBTQroles
inmainstreamdramasandformoreactorswhoare
Hiding in
TheCorner
Office
Closet
● A conversationwithformerBPCEOJohn
Browne,nowchairmanofL1EnergyHoldings,
onthepriceofnotbeingoutin corporatelife
LGBTQ themselves. For the stars of Pose, Canals
wants recognition of their work as actors, without
qualification. “These trans women are not playing
trans,theyareplayinga womanwhohappenstobe
trans,”hesays.“Thereis somuchmorethatmakes
thesecharacterswhotheyare.”�AnoushaSakouiBloomberg Businessweek: How were LGBT people
treated when you first started working?
Lord Browne: I was born a long time ago, 1948, and
while I was at university, it was still illegal to be gay
and actually have gay sex. You could go to prison.
The law changed halfway through my time there.
But before then, people were terrified to be any-
thing other than totally straight, otherwise you
could be blackmailed or you could find yourself in
terrible trouble. So the law changed, and nothing
actually happened. The behavior of many years was
still there—that basically people did not approve of
people being gay. They thought they were weak.
They thought they were unreliable. They thought
they were people that really shouldn’t be part of a
business world, an academic world, a commercial
world. So everyone pretended to be straight, and,
indeed, so did I.
So, in the closet ...
I was, you know, the son of an Auschwitz sur-
vivor. She told me two important things: One is,
never tell anyone a secret, because they’ll surely
use it against you. And the second is, never be a
member of an identifiable minority, because when
the going gets tough, the majority always hurts the
minority. And in her experience, that was spot on.
So I [had] a straight public life and a deeply secret
gay life, which I rarely indulged in. I kept two lives
separate, like many people, and I made sure they
nevercollided.
Youknewfrom thestartyou’dhavetostayin
thecloset?
Yes, and I knew that, because all references to
gay people were pejorative. Everyone used gay
jokes. It was a time when some important British
politician before my time said, “Well I thought men
like that would take a glass of whisky and a revolver
and do the right thing to themselves in their study.”
You know, kill themselves. And that was the way
people thought about it.
Was there anything unique about the energy industry?
The energy industry was certainly macho,
that’s for sure. And I say that was clearly the case,
because there was almost no women in the busi-
ness. I remember one woman engineer that I was
withwhenI joinedBP.Shewasa brilliantengi-
neerandquicklyleftbecauseshecouldn’tstand
theenvironment.It wasa machoenvironment,but
it wasnottheonlyindustry.Untilquiterecently,
SiliconValleywasa prettytoughplacetobe—people
said frat house. It was sort of not appropriate either
forwomenorforgaypeople.Andsometimesthese
gohandinhand.Industrieshavestruggledsolongto
getgenderequality.We’vebeenatit 60,70, 80 years,
and we still haven’t achieved the right level. For
LGBT we started much later, so it’s hardly surprising
it’s behind. It really takes time for people to believe
that they’re safe to be who they are.
What is the importance of role models?
I never had a role model. A successful role
model is the single-most important thing, because
it’s more powerful than lecturing people or the cor-
porate brochure which says, “We stand for equal-
ity, we stand for inclusion, we stand for diversity.”
They’re important things to say, but actually the
most important thing is seeing: “I can see her, I can
see him, and they are being themselves.” That’s