Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver have a movie coming out this week called The Assignment. In it, Weaver, a scorned and devious doctor, decides to change the sex of a man, Frank Kitchen, by making him undergo a sex change operation against his will. The drama of the pulpy action-thriller goes on from there. (I haven't seen it.) Immediately, the premise of the film raised red flags. It sounded like a cheap thrill to have Rodriguez be punished by being surgically redesigned to be a man trapped in a woman's body. It also felt like an attack on the transgender community, which the writer of the film, Denis Hamill, rejects, telling Variety that the character Rodriguez portrays is "not transgender" because the characters has "gone through a sex change, but it’s not a gender change." He added: "It’s pure entertainment."
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And it does sound like portraying a man was entertaining for Rodriguez. The actress had fun while dressed as a man admitting that she even tinkered with online dating to get into character. (In other words, if you matched with a man about a year ago that looks like the guy in the Instagram below, you were also low-key catfished by this already problematic film.) "Playing a naked man was really hard. It’s a good four hours of prep, two for the chin and nose implants alone,” she told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday. “I look kind of Mediterranean, don’t you agree? I made a Tinder account for myself [as a man] and it was so funny. Got some matches!"
The 38-year-old also explained in detail her relationship with her prosthetic penis, which she picked out herself. "I was like, ‘I want the biggest cock we could possibly get!’ I was adamant about it. I’ve encountered a few skinny boys with really, really big — you know — so I thought, why not be one?” she told THR. “But it’s very uncomfortable — I gotta say, I don’t know how guys do it. Now I know why guys are way more physically sexually thinkers than women are — because it’s always there! I mean, if it’s rubbing between your legs all the time, I’m sure I’d think about it all the time, too!"
What a strange film.