Talk To Me star Zoe Terakes speaks out after film is banned in Kuwait over actor's gender

After demanding that Warner Bros. remove all “alleged LGBTQ-related narration and dialogue” from Barbie if the studio ever wanted Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster to screen in Kuwait (and a slew of other Middle Eastern countries), censors in what is reportedly the region’s toughest market (per The Hollywood Reporter) have gotten even stricter.

Over the weekend, THR reported that A24's newest hit Talk To Me had been blocked from release in Kuwait. (The film has already been released without edits in all other countries in the region.) However, unlike other recent films to receive this same treatment (including Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Thor: Love and Thunder, Lightyear, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Eternals and West Side Story), the Australian horror flick wasn’t blocked for any on-screen LGBTQ+ themes or storylines.

According to both THR and The Guardian (who separately confirmed the information), the film was blocked purely due to the identity of trans nonbinary actor Zoe Terakes, who plays a character whose gender is never actually mentioned in the film. This is reportedly the first time Kuwaiti censors have blocked a film for this reason—an unnerving message for an already heavily-threatened community in the country.

Terakes took to their social media Sunday evening to post a lengthy statement on the ban.

“[O]ur film doesn’t have queer themes. Our film doesn’t actually ever mention my transness, or my queerness. I am a trans actor who happened to get the role. I’m not a theme. I’m a person,” they wrote.

“This is a new precedent. It is targeted and dehumanising and means to harm us,” they continued. “As much as it is very sad to be on the receiving end of this, what is even more heartbreaking is what this precedent means for the queer and trans people of Kuwait.”

They continued:

Representation is hope. Representation is a light at the end of the tunnel, a reason to keep going, something to hold onto in the dark, a voice that whispers things can be better than they are. Eliminating trans actors on screens will not eliminate trans people (as much as the government of Kuwait wishes it would) but it will eliminate a lot of hope. And hope is such a large part of how we live as marginalised people. It’s how we learn to move through the hatred and the mistreatment and the violence.

Causeway and Bankside—the film’s production company and international distributor respectively—also issued a statement in support of Terakes: “We stand in solidarity with Zoe Terakes following the decision by Kuwait to ban the film Talk to Me. Zoe has made their own statement, which we fully support, and we are immensely proud of their involvement in the film.”