Alan Cumming just said the quiet part out loud about queer representation in film & TV

I don’t think that they had a disadvantage [on the Traitors], but it would be better if there were more [queer] people there, so it didn’t seem like they were token.

On a purely statistical basis, I think [the previous casts have been] very diverse racially and gender-wise, but there just wasn’t enough LGBTQ people represented. It’s exposure therapy. It’s visibility. And you have to do it in every small way you can.

We need to see that trans people are everywhere. They felt more comfortable to be visible in the last couple of decades. But historically, there’s always a backlash against change, and we are in the midst of a huge one right now.

My response to that is to push back and say, ‘No, we’re not going to hide. Here are those people.’ And if I have a chance to help do that by just saying to the producers of The Traitors, ‘We need to make sure there’s more queer and trans people on the show,’ I will.

We’ve just got to be more representative. And even if there are more…. I think, ‘Why can’t we have more people on these shows than actually are, percentage-wise, in society?’ Why would that be so bad? It’s happened for centuries the other way around with white straight men. I mean, why are we being so shackled by our quotas?

There should be trans and queer people everywhere, and people of color everywhere, until people just shut up and stop being so stupid and hateful about it.

Alan Cumming speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the upcoming season of “The Traitors” and why we still need more LGBTQ+ representation in film and TV.