Julianne Moore Clears Up Claim That She Regrets Playing a Lesbian

When The Kids Are All Right came out ten years ago, any dissent over the fact that two straight women, Julianne Moore and Annette Bening, were stepping into the roles of a same-sex couple was relatively quiet and largely ignored.

But in 2020, that’s something we’re collectively giving a little more thought to. There are still numerous queer roles played by straight actors, but to have a film revolving around a queer storyline without casting any queer people at all gets some side-eye from the LGBTQ community and its allies.

It’s that new collective awareness that prompted recent comments from Moore saying she’s not sure the film would’ve been made with the same cast had it come about in today’s world.

“I’ve thought about that a lot,” she told Variety. “Here we were, in this movie about a queer family, and all of the principal actors were straight. I look back and go, ‘Ouch. Wow.’”

Predictably, several outlets began running with the comments, claiming Moore regrets or would reconsider playing a lesbian — an attention-grabbing headline, no doubt, but the kind that makes queer hearts sink if they don’t read any further.

But that, of course, is not what Moore was trying to say, and she publicly took issue with the way her words had been misrepresented in some headlines.

Moore actually said it best in her original conversation with Variety:

“We need to give real representation to people, but I’m grateful for all the experiences that I’ve had as an actor because my job is to communicate a universality of experience to the world,” she said.