Emmy nominations won’t be announced until July, and yet fans are already anticipating nominations for all of their favorite shows, from Severance to The Pitt. One performer guaranteed a nod is Bella Ramsey, the nonbinary star of HBO’s The Last of Us. And when asked about being nominated as “an actress” in a recent interview, Bella weighed in on gendered categories at award shows, saying that they’re not quite sure how to solve the problem with Hollywood’s gender binary.
Bella discussed how they navigate being nonbinary in an industry so often defined by gender norms during an appearance on The Louis Theroux Podcast. When host Louis Theroux mentioned that Bella’s previous nomination for Best Actress in a Television Drama at the Emmys had caused a bit of an uproar, they noted, “I wasn’t insulted.” Louis then mentioned that he was hesitant about removing gender from award categories because “a lot of women wouldn’t get nominated.”
Bella agreed. “I think it’s so important that that’s preserved, as well,” they added. “Like, the recognition for women in the industry is preserved.”
They continued, “The gendered categories conversation is a really interesting one, and I don’t have the answer. I wish that there was something that was, like, an easy way around it, but I think that it is really important that we have a female category and a male category. But, then like, where do non binary or gender-nonconforming people fit into that? I don’t know.”
Bella also clarified that while they do identify as nonbinary, they don’t get hung up on pronouns. “My thing at the moment is, like, call me how you see me,” they said, adding that if an award show in Hollywood wants to classify them as “an actress” or a taxi driver misgenders them without knowing, “it doesn’t feel like an attack on my identity.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the actor touched on being neurodivergent and how freeing their diagnosis—obtained while they were filming season 1 of TLOU—has been. “When I got that diagnosis, like so much in my life made sense, and so much of my experience growing up. And it’s helpful for me every day, having that understanding.”
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