Jordan Aaron Hall has spoken with unusual clarity about playing Amir, the first openly queer character in A Different World.
Asked about the weight of the role, he said:
“It's not pressure, it's responsibility, right? I feel a responsibility to this character, to the community. To show up and to give him a multi-layered performance. I think a lot of the time when we see a queer character on television, we're very boiled down to being the ‘sassy gay best friend’ and the punchline of the jokes. But I think it's a testament to the writers and the producers and the way it is that it all came together, that he is so multidimensional. He's a three-dimensional person, and it isn't about him being queer. It's the fact that he's a queer person, and he can exist as it is that he is. This idea of normalization. Let him be who it is that he is, and the world, however they feel about it, it's up to them, but he gets to be who it is that he is.”
The point is precise. Hall is not asking for Amir to be defined by sexuality. He is asking for a character who happens to be queer to be written as a full person: flawed, specific, and allowed to exist without becoming a type. That is a modest demand and a serious one.
In a revival of a series long associated with Black campus life, the decision to let Amir occupy the story as himself, rather than as a lesson or a punchline, is the part that matters. Hall’s comments make the intention of the performance unmistakable.
Via TODAY with Jenna & Sheinelle