Elliot Page has been grabbing plenty of headlines over his revelations of his troubled time working in Hollywood over the last decade, and another extract from his memoir has seen The Umbrella Academy star taking aim at the filming of 2017’s Flatliners, a remake of the Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon and Julia Roberts movie from 1990.
Page is opening up about his life, loves and working in a toxic Hollywood in his new memoir, Pageboy. Entertainment Weekly recently shared Page’s recollection of his work on Flatliners, which receives a full dedicated chapter of his book, and sees the actor revealing that to him the whole production was deeply flawed and “went off the rails” from the start, with stunts putting lives in danger and the shoot being very “discriminatory to the LGBTQ+ community” and “misogynistic.”
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In his memoir, Page recalls how during one of the movie’s stunts, he and co-star Kiersey Clemons believed that they were not given the same safety precautions as other cast members, even after calling out their doubts.
“We were getting ready for a car stunt when Kiersey and I realized that everyone had a built-in thick seat belt, except for us. No restraints, a basic safety measure of the carefully orchestrated, expensive, and elaborate stunt that hadn’t been thought through… We looked to the various stunt crew members strapping the others in, perplexed, questioning why we weren’t being secured for the scene. ‘Why does everyone else have a safety belt but not us?’ we’d inquired.Luckily, everyone was fine, but I think back to how reckless and dangerous that was. How Kiersey and I were treated with such flippancy and disrespect. Regardless of a stranger’s car making it onto the closed set of a car chase, what if something just… went wrong?”
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Elliot Page Faced Queerphobia and Racism on Flatliners Set.
While the safety measures on the set of Flatliners were questionable to Page, the problems with the production did not end there. Further into the chapter, Page confesses that he should have seen the production being nothing short of “a sh-t show” after his first few days on set. According to the actor:
“Within our first week, someone approached Kiersey on set, sitting in her chair between takes, you only have this part because you’re Black, you know, he said to her.”
Page came out as a trans man in 2020, and had previously come out as gay, but working on Flatliners three years earlier provided a number of challenges to the actor, who really didn’t feel comfortable as the person he was then. Calling out the way he was forced into being “less queer” during filming, Page recollected being asked by a head of production:
“‘Are you mad that this character isn’t gay?’ he asked me.” [I replied] ‘Are you asking me this because I did not want to wear a skirt?’ His face remained the same, an annoying grin with a glinting youthfulness in the eyes, but I pressed on. ‘Are you really asking me if I am angry about this character not being gay because I am not wearing a f—ing skirt?’ He looked on inscrutably, as if being pleasant means you are not queerphobic. ‘Your view of women is egregiously narrow,’ I said to the man, reminding him lesbians wear skirts, too.”
Page goes on to say that he confronted the executive, “speaking of the limitations, the misogyny, the queerphobia. All that I had swallowed for years, I hauled out my insides for him to gorge on.”
Elliot Page’s memoir Pageboy is available now.
You can view the original article HERE.
