When the trailer for Ellen DeGeneres’ latest film Finding Dory was released, it quickly prompted speculation that the film featured a lesbian couple. While that turned out to be false, DeGeneres’ tells Yahoo! Movies that it would have been a sign of much needed progress.
Because she knew the character wasn’t gay, DeGeneres says she was thrown off by the rumors:
When I heard [that speculation], I thought that’s cool. But I had seen the movie and I hadn’t seen what they were talking about. And then I realized it was just a woman with short hair and they just jumped to a conclusion that any woman with short hair is a lesbian!
For a moment, she wondered if her gaydar was broken:
I was really disappointed in myself because I know lesbians, and I spot them pretty easily. I was like ‘Damn, I didn’t see the lesbian! What’s wrong with me?’ But it was just a woman with a bad short haircut, so that’s all it was.
The actress and comedienne who famously came out both in and out of character before many LGBTQ people were in the public eye adds that there’s still plenty of progress yet to be made.
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“I want to see films that have every single person that is on the planet represented [on screen],” she told Yahoo Movies. “We’re overdue for every film to represent every single person on this planet.”
Watch the trailer below to see what people were talking about.
