Watch: Trans men team up to audition for old Scarlett Johansson roles in parody video

Los Angeles: A group of trans men have teamed up to star in a parody video which features them mock-auditioning for cisgender roles that actor Scarlett Johansson played in her career. The parody video comes in response to the controversial casting of Johansson as a trans man in the upcoming film Rub & Tug, which will be directed by Rupert Sanders.

It has been produced by queer online magazine INTO and features trans actors, D’Lo, Justin Chow, Scott Turner Schofield and Rocco Kayiatos stepping into Johansson’s roles of Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow from The Avengers and Anna in He’s Just Not That Into You. In the end, an off-screen casting director offers Schofield the role of Samantha in 2013’s Her, but he turns it down. “I’m just having a lot of trouble because cis women are really marginalized in Hollywood,” says Schofield in response to the offer. “I know there are people who have lived this experience and who bring a lot of authenticity to it and I feel a little weird taking that from them,” he added. The video is captioned “What if trans men got cast in the few roles that are made for trans men?” (Also Read: A Fantastic Woman director on Rub & Tug casting row: No actor should be prohibited from taking up any role) In Rub & Tug, Johansson will portray Jean Marie Gill, who succeeded in Pittsburgh’s 1970s and 1980s massage parlour and prostitution business by assuming the identity of a man, Dante ‘Tex’ Gill. Johansson’s representatives had responded to the controversy by alluding to the performances of Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman, who all have played trans characters despite being cisgenders.