Michelle Rodriguez defends 'transphobic' [re]Assignment

Actor says she took part in drama about a hitman whose gender is changed maliciously ‘to express frustration’ at Hollywood’s lack of creativity

Michelle Rodriguez has responded to vehement criticism of her new film [re]Assignment, by defending it as a “culture shock pic” she made to “express my frustration” with the current state of the film industry.

After its premiere at Toronto, [re]Assignment attracted hostile reactions for its plotline involving forced gender reassignment surgery: Rodriguez plays a hitman called Frank Kitchen who is kidnapped and undergoes surgery at the hands of a deranged doctor played by Sigourney Weaver. The Guardian’s Benjamin Lee described it as a “film made with such staggering idiocy that it deserves to be studied by future generations for just how and why it ever got made”; while trans activist Elizabeth Marie Rivera has called for a boycott, writing that it contains “a fucked up and twisted ‘transgender’ trope that is being forced down our throat”.

Calling it by its original title, Tomboy, Rodriguez said in a post on Instagram that she was glad she “took the plunge”. She added: “The industry seems to be running low on edgy creativity & ‘real take a chance’ controversy, sometimes it makes me want to scream, instead I did what I always do when I’m bored with the ‘status quo’, I shot crazy b movie Indy to express my frustration.”

Rodriguez also mentioned some of the props she used in her gender transformation, including a beard (“boy was that beard itchy”), “fake boob covers”, “crazy male chest” and a “mangina” – designed to conjure up the illusion that she was a “man stuck in a newly operated sex-changed body”. She wrote: “I never felt more like a woman than when I played a man.”

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