Scarlett Johansson stepped in hot water when it was announced that she would play Dante “Tex” Gill, a transgender man who ran illicit massage parlors in the 1970s, in a film called Rub & Tug. After triggering a wave of backlash, she stepped down from the role. “I’ve learned a lot from the community since making my first statement about my casting and realize it was insensitive,” Johansson said at the time.
Now the project has been resuscitated and reinvented as a TV series. Its pilot will be written by Emmy-nominated Pose and Transparent writer-producer Our Lady J, according to Deadline. In addition, New Regency has committed to casting a trans actor in the lead role of Gill, a complex, fascinating figure in Pittsburgh’s organized crime scene in the 1970s.
“Tex’s life story is like no other, and the rich landscape of this unexplored moment in time has truly captured my imagination,” Our Lady J said in a statement, per Deadline. “I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to write a gangster drama based on such a fascinating and diverse web of queer characters. The show is about the promise of reinvention, and the peril of losing oneself in the process. Tex Gill was out and proud in an era—the late 1970s—when living authentically came with the price of social ostracization, leaving him vulnerable to a life of crime and lawlessness. Having grown up in Pennsylvania myself, I’m also excited to delve deep into Pittsburgh’s underbelly as it unspools the story of Tex’s remarkable life—it’s also the story of a city’s struggle for rebirth and a proud community’s efforts to make its voice heard.”
Cindy Bruno Gill, Gill’s widow, will serve as a consultant on the series, as will journalist and author Brendan Koerner. Both were attached to the original version of the project.
“I am excited to be working with Our Lady J and New Regency to honor Tex’s memory by telling his story the way he would want to be remembered,” Bruno Gill said in a statement. “Tex was transgender at a time when being transgender meant facing great discrimination, yet he was fearless about being himself in a way that inspired those who knew him to be proud of who they were too. Our Lady J is the perfect person to give voice to Tex’s story, and I know he would be proud of the evolution of this project.”
The show does not yet have a streamer or network attached.
Back in 2018, Rub & Tug was envisioned as a film starring Johansson and directed by Rupert Sanders. The pair had recently collaborated on Ghost in the Shell, a critically maligned, whitewashed adaptation of the popular Japanese manga. After Johansson’s casting in Rub & Tug was announced, there was instant backlash, spurring the actor to initially act defensively toward critics. “Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment,” her rep said at the time in a statement to Bustle, noting cisgender actors who had played trans characters in the past. Johansson quickly issued a contrite follow-up statement and departed the project.
In a 2019 cover story for Vanity Fair, Johansson admitted she “mishandled” the situation. “I felt terribly about it,” she said. “To feel like you’re kind of tone-deaf to something is not a good feeling.” Two years later the project has, at last, nearly come full circle. In the meantime, go watch Disclosure on Netflix, in which actor Jen Richards neatly explains why it’s problematic for cis actors, particularly cis men, to play trans characters onscreen.
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