While it would be untrue to say, in front of the camera at least, that women and racial minorities are invisible in Hollywood, the same cannot be said for smaller diversity segments such as performers with a disability or those who identify as non-binary.
Intersectionality – the idea that individuals experience othering and discrimination based on multiple intersecting identities, encompassing gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual identity, sexual orientation and disability, is equally something that receives insufficient consideration.
Born Kathrine Davenport, non-binary performer Skyler Davenport, who is also registered blind, is a perfect example of why the entertainment industry needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
In their latest role in IFC Midnight’s home invasion thriller See For Me Davenport wonderfully balances how these interlacing identities can be both emphasized to the extreme and rendered entirely incidental all at the same time.
Changing times
Twenty-nine-year-old Davenport opted to undergo what is referred to in the LGBTQ community as “top surgery” which involves a double mastectomy when they were 18.
Two years into living their life in the body they had dreamt of during difficult teenage years, Davenport’s physiology began to alter in a manner that was far less welcome.
In 2012, they experienced severe and permanent neurological sight loss as a result of a rare genetic condition known as hemiplegic migraines which can morph into a type of stroke.
Despite this setback, Davenport pushed ahead with their career as an actor and voiceover artist for video games and cartoons such as Final Fantasy and Pokémon. The Los Angeles-based actor’s on-screen credits include NCIS and Murder Made Me Famous.
Taking the lead
Directed by Randall Okita and filmed in Canada, See For Me, a modern-day spin on the 1967 thriller Wait Until Dark starring Audrey Hepburn, was released last month and represents Davenport’s debut starring in a lead role.
They authentically portray blind former professional skier Sophie who is coming to terms with the fact that sight loss has dashed her Olympic dreams.
Sophie takes a job house-sitting in a secluded mansion and downloads the app See For Me after she finds herself accidentally locked out of the property.
The app connects visually impaired people with sighted volunteers through a smartphone camera in order to receive guided assistance when required.
Sophie links up with Kelly (Jessica Parker Kennedy) an army veteran and avid fan of first-person shooter games. Later, however, she becomes entirely dependent on her sighted guide in a way she could never have bargained for when thieves break into the house in search of a hidden safe.
Keeping it real
Though Davenport is authentically cast as Sophie and the plot entirely revolves around her disability, the movie does not fall into the cliched trap of making disability entirely character-defining for Sophie.
She is multi-layered and some may say not altogether likable at times, especially when it comes to the movie’s plot twist - without wishing to give away any spoilers.
Addressing the topic of casting disabled performers for disabled roles, Davenport told Advocate earlier this year, “It’s not that you can’t be a good actor, and you can’t portray it accurately. But I think people that come into this world, and for whatever reason, their beingness has decided to experience a disability...there’s something so special about that. It brings this little indescribable spark to the role that you’re just not going to get with someone that doesn’t live in that day-to-day.”
They further added, “I also think it draws different reactions out of the other actors. I’m not knocking anybody that doesn’t cast that way. But in my opinion, why wouldn’t you?”
On the other hand, Davenport’s non-binary status receives no attention whatsoever in the film with the movie’s production team wholly unaware of how they identify before casting them in the role.
They do, however, recall a lovely experience touching down at the airport in Canada to begin filming:
“I wasn't even aware that the production team knew that I identified as non-binary," says Davenport.
"Maybe my manager must have said something. The person at immigration letting me into the country said, ‘The production team has you down as agender. Are you okay with being put in the international system as not having a gender?’
They continue, “I had been worried that it might look like I was trying to get into the country withholding information about myself or something like that and it was just so sweet that they did that for me ahead of time.”
Speaking more broadly on the topic of wrestling with her gender identity as a youth Davenport says, “Growing up in Wisconsin in the mid-nineties, I knew I just felt very uncomfortable in a female body.”
“After I had the surgery, when we were talking about doing hormones, I just felt like this isn't me. This doesn't feel right. It's not that I wanted to be completely male and I didn’t want to be female either.”
They continue, “I went a number of years until I was introduced to the terms asexual and non-binary as orientations. And then I just felt like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s it.’ In the end, I just wanted the surgery to make me androgynous. I know most people will perceive me as female and that’s fine.
“The surgery wasn’t so I could be presented in a certain way or to get a certain response. It was just for me,” says Davenport.
In the shorter term, Davenport hopes that their starring role in See For Me will help propel their career in front of the camera but also enjoys the multiplicity of identities that their video game work has afforded.
Speaking to Gay City News at the end of 2021 they said, “I am working on about five different video games now. The voiceovers are pure fun. It’s still acting because the games are getting more [complex]. I do voice and facial capture because the games are so real. I can play a 5-year-old or 10-foot-tall alien.”
Identities probably can’t get more intersectional than that, but for Skyler Davenport, it’s just a road that’s already been well-trodden.
