Ahead of her new series about a canceled news personality, a famous British actress spoke about the hazards of cancel culture and its implications for entertainment.
Actress Alex Kingston famously played time-traveling assassin River Song from the "Doctor Who" series, but her latest project will be in a setting that is all-too familiar for viewers. Kingston spoke with The Telegraph in a candid interview promoting her upcoming role in "Douglas is Cancelled," a TV drama where its eponymous main character, a news anchor, finds himself facing public outrage after making a politically-incorrect joke.
"Cancel culture is terrifying," Kingston told The Telegraph. "Sort of fascistic, really. I don’t think people realise how dangerous cancelling people is, what that has meant historically."
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"My generation is treading on eggshells, not knowing whether what you say will unintentionally hurt somebody," she added. "I get really confused about pronouns, for instance. I’m just not confident with how and when to use them. There is no empathy or sympathy, opinions are immediate and black and white."
She went on to express hope that "we’ll start coming back to a place where people can be kinder to each other, both in thinking about what they’re going to say and hearing what’s being said."
She appeared to address some of the controversies around casting actors that are not a historically accurate match for the characters they are portraying.
"Sometimes, if you want to be historically accurate, you’ve got to face the reality of what that would have meant in casting terms," she said. "People should be allowed to explore roles they would not have been able to explore before and also not be deprived of roles or even of writing roles because they don’t actually physically apply to them. We need a sensible, fertile middle ground."
