Kristen Stewart’s character in the highly anticipated “Charlie’s Angels” reboot is “definitely gay,” Elizabeth Banks, the film’s writer, producer and director recently confirmed, after previously refusing to put a label on the character’s sexuality.
When the film’s trailer was initially released in June, LGBTQ fans dubbed the reboot “Charlie’s Gayngels” in celebration of the casting of Stewart, a queer actress, as Sabrina Wilson, the hard-partying rebel of the group. Yet, these fans found themselves disappointed when Banks pushed back on speculation that Stewart’s character was queer.
“I don’t feel there is a label that fits her,” Banks said of the character in a September interview with Digital Spy. “The only thing that was important to me was to not label it as anything. It’s fine if the media wants to label it, I think that’s OK, but I didn’t do that.”
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Banks, however, backtracked on those comments in a recent interview with Pride Source, stating that Sabrina is “definitely gay.”
“I mean, she [Kristen] wanted to be gay in the movie and I’m like, ‘Yeah,’” Banks said. “I just wanted to make sure that she was able to present a character that she was fully behind.”
Banks added that she wrote a moment in the script in which Stewart flirts with another woman and that she was “all for” Stewart presenting herself as queer in the movie.
In the “Charlie’s Angels” reboot, a new generation of investigators join together on a mission to protect the public from dangerous technology. The other “angels” include Ella Balinska as Jane Kano, a former military intelligence agent from the United Kingdom, and Naomi Scott as Elena Houghlin, a scientist who trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Stewart, 29, has been vocal about the challenges she faces as a queer actress in Hollywood. Earlier this year, she revealed that she had been advised to hide her sexuality to “preserve” her career.
"I have fully been told, 'If you just like do yourself a favor, and don’t go out holding your girlfriend’s hand in public, you might get a Marvel movie,'" Stewart told Harper’s Bazaar.
And when asked during a panel at the Toronto Film Festival in September what kind of superhero she’d like to play, Stewart replied, “A gay one.”
