Having worked in Hollywood for nearly 30 years, Gabrielle Union is no stranger to dealing with slings and arrows. Still, when she opens Twitter to see people attacking her transgender daughter, Zaya Wade, it hits another.
Or, as Union told me at the Thursday night afterparty,test,” opened Toronto International Film Festival: “It doesn’t matter what you say about me. Usually I’m going to come with these fists or read about filth. But when it’s your kid, it’s a whole different ball game.”
As loving parents of transgender teenagers, Union and her husband, former NBA player Dwyane Wade, have become outspoken role models for parents of LGBTQ children. “People listen to me,” Union said. However, in “Her Examination”, Union plays the exact opposite of her. Inez, a flirtatious, chain-smoking prison guard with deep-rooted homophobia, kicks his son out of the house for being gay at the age of 16.
“None of our kids are disposable, but pushing it away and trying to move Inez forward has been a once-in-a-lifetime challenge,” Union said after the film’s premiere, adding, “This is what I want. It’s the most important job I’ve ever done,” he added.
The film is based on the life story of writer-director Elegance Bratton herself and is written by Ellis (Jeremy Pope) has spent years on the streets of New York since his mother cut all ties with him. Desperate to turn his life around, Ellis enlists in the Marine Corps and faces a hellish boot camp made worse by homophobic antics from his fellow recruits. Still, Ellis is holding out, hoping he can make it through so he can start mending the rift with his mother, whom he still loves deeply.
Union is best known for films such as ‘Bring It On’ and ‘Bad Boys II’. Sitting on her couch, Bratton told me Union was always his first choice.
“In the black community, she’s an icon,” Bratton said at the afterparty. Where is the justification for
Still, he confessed a hidden motive for casting her. Bratton hopes that with the cultural cachet Union has, her presence will make it impossible to ignore the “examination.”
“Beyond her obvious talent, beauty, and her as an activist and superstar, she’s a name my mother could never avoid.” Gabrielle Union played you in the movie and she will see the movie and I always hope that when she sees it it will change things between us There was
Bratton’s mother died while he was putting the film together. Watching Union lead her on her set made things so emotional for her that Union came to the monitor and comforted him after her scene.
“I say the same things to my kids that I said to Elegance,” Union recalls. “I’m not his mom, but what I can do is a loving adult. So hopefully there was some healing there.”
By playing the character, did Union gain insight into people attacking her family on social media? Some, she said.
“For Ines, and many others I know, a commitment to the American dream and full assimilation to be seen as worthy of upward fluidity and opportunity can literally drive one’s children away. I can,” Union said. “What effort do people go to make you look worthy of people who would not spit on you if you were on fire!”
The actress continued, “Anything other than very wealthy sishet white men with power tell you it’s acceptable, appropriate, or reasonable, if they tell you to do so. You’ll cut off your arm.Speak like this, walk like this, you must be like this!You must be straight and a Christian!Very specific kind of people have sex outside of the same old 6 o’clock position I can not do it.
Referring to her husband’s longtime friend and former teammate LeBron James, Union said the desire to look perfect in the eyes of the world is not worth it. I came out of poverty, became a single mother, and became the best basketball player in the world.” But despite all that power, Union said the front gate to his Los Angeles home still remained. trolled with racist slurs The day before he was supposed to take the court at the 2017 NBA Finals.
lesson? “You can keep yourself calm and reshape all the time, but that doesn’t matter,” Union said. Do you think you can go further? No. All you’ve done is lose a part of you.”