Hollywood Made Sasheer Zamata Gay, As Per the Agenda
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 14: Actress Sasheer Zamata attends the Los Angeles Premiere of “Thelma” at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on June 14, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images)
After being cast as queer in multiple shows after leaving Saturday Night Live, including Woke, The Last O.G, Home Economics and Tuca & Bertie, Sasheer Zamata came to realize she’s a “late-in-life” lesbian. Maybe not necessarily as a direct result of that, but she does tell Them.us: “I kept getting these roles. And this is before I myself was figuring out my identity. I was like, ’Whoa, what are these casting directors seeing that I’m not seeing?’”
While Zamata still wants her private life to stay private, she does want to be out publicly. Especially as she starts doing more stand-up, she doesn’t want to have to censor her dating life.
Zamata also mentioned Chappell Roan’s statements about boundaries in her them.us interview, hoping that this will apply to her after sharing this news, and I once again want to say how much I love that Chappell laid down that line and that other celebrities seem to be following suit.
When Zamata joined Saturday Night Live in 2014, she was the show’s first Black female cast member since Maya Rudolph’s departure in 2007. She left the show in 2017 and has been working steadily since, including co-hosting the very popular podcast “Best Friends” with not-straight comic Nicole Beyer since 2019.
Sasheer Zamata also says that while her character in Agatha All Along isn’t explicitly queer, there are queer themes she connected to, which I personally am looking forward to.
And this is part of why I will never say that straight people should never play queer characters. While I think all trans characters should be played by trans people, I don’t feel the same way about “straight” actors playing queer characters. I think if a person is drawn to a queer role and a story, and wants to tell it with care and thoughtfulness, they should do it. Because how many actors have we seen start off thinking they were straight, until they played a queer character, stepped in their shoes, talked to queer fans, then realized they were queer? There are dozens, but three off the top of my head include Chyler Leigh after playing Alex Danvers in Supergirl, and Dom Provost-Chalkley and Kat Barrell after playing Waverly and Nicole in Wynonna Earp. And now Sasheer Zamata! (I do, however, think queer people should always be involved with WRITING these characters and stories.) Obviously queer characters played by queer actors hit different, but sometimes there’s a reason a person is drawn to a story, and sometimes we just need to let them cook.
Sasheer Zamata has said that in the process of coming out, her friends started noticing the positive changes in her, and I hope this revelation will bring her nothing but joy and hilarious dating stories for her stand-up act.
More pop culture stories for your day:
+ The cast of One Day at a Time will be reuniting for charity, where they will get to do table reads of episodes they never got to film, including but not limited to their series finale, giving us all much-needed closure
+ Angelina Jolie is almost 50 and embracing being an “older woman” (and is still getting standing ovations)
+ Only Murders in the Building, How I Met Your Father, The Bear, Big Mouth, and Quiz Lady (which are all either queer or have queer actors in it) are among the Creative Arts Emmy winners
+ Speaking of Only Murders in the Building, it has been renewed for a fifth season before the fourth is even over, you love to see it (now if only they’d remember Mabel is bisexual)
+ Sarah Paulson steps into the 1930s for horror film called Hold Your Breath
+ Floriana Lima, relevant to us here on this website page because she played iconic gay character Maggie Sawyer on Supergirl, is coming to Grey’s Anatomy
+ Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, turns trauma into art
+ Special Ops: Lioness comes back October 27th, here’s hoping it’s as gay as season one
+ Real Housewives star Heather Dubrow moved for her queer kids and now they are thriving
+ Dead Boy Detectives was canceled at Netflix, which means no more goth lesbian butcher for me, and yes I am sad about it
+ Melissa Etheridge did a mashup of her song “I Want To Come Over” with Chappell Roan’s “Red Wine Supernova” and a hundred lesbian angels got their wings
“While I think all trans characters should be played by trans people”
I think all *modern* trans characters (mid-20th c or later) should be played by trans actors. Before the arrival of hormones, trans people were not in their secondary sex characteristics any different than cis people.
Some years ago now, there was word that Rachel Weisz was set to play a “passing” (female-bodied, passing as male) British military doctor from the early-mid 19th century (I had enjoyed the biography it was based upon). I guess that didn’t happen, but I still see no reason why cis actors can’t play historic persons/characters that, today, we would characterize as “trans.”