Last week, the trailer for Ben Stiller’s Zoolander 2 dropped and included Benedict Cumberbatch’s cameo in the highly anticipated sequel. Cumberbatch is seen portraying a transgender person and one person has already called for a boycott of the film.
The trailer features Ben Stiller’s Zoolander and Owen Wilson’s Hansel learning that they no longer fit in the fashion community. They meet the “biggest model in the world,” All, who is played by Cumberbatch. He has no eyebrows and is wearing long black hair. After Zoolander asks All what gender he is, Hansel says, “I think he means, ‘Do you have a hot dog or a bun?’”
Sarah Rose has started a petition on ThePetitionSite.com, calling for a boycott of the film because of the scene. The petition has earned 11,500 signatures at the moment.
“Cumberbatch’s character is clearly portrayed as an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals,” Rose wrote. “This is the modern equivalent of using blackface to represent a minority.”
She suggested that, if Stiller and writer Justin Theroux wanted to show the rise of transgender people in the fashion world, they could have hired Andrea Pejic. But by hiring a non-transgender person for the role, the film “endorses harmful and dangerous perceptions of the queer community at large,” Rose writes.
Paramount’s Zoolander 2, a sequel to Stiller’s 2001 cult comedy, opens on Feb. 12.