Cillian Murphy responds to ‘homophobic’ video shared by Ron DeSantis campaign

The team behind Peaky Blinders has denounced the ‘homophobic’ video shared by Ron DeSantis ‘s presidential campaign. The video, which was posted last week, slams DeSantis’s rival 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump for vowing to ‘protect our LGBTQ citizens’. The video includes clips of the former president that featured him appearing to embrace the LGBT+ community in the wake of the 2016 mass shooting at gay nightclub Pulse. The second part of the video shifts to DeSantis and his own comments and policies on drag acts and transgender rights. In the second half, the video appears to portray the Florida governor as masculine, with his image spliced with images of muscular, shirtless men and several Hollywood and British actors, including Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, and Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy . The video has already been described as homophobic by a number of LGBT+ members of the Republican party, as well as by critics on the other side of the aisle. On Wednesday (5 July), Murphy and the Peaky Blinders team joined others in denouncing it, revealing that the footage of the show for the video was ‘obtained without permission or official license’. In a joint statement on Twitter, Murphy and Peaky Blinders team wrote: ‘We do not support nor endorse the video’s narrative and strongly disapprove of the use of the content in this manner.’ Apart from Murphy’s clip, DeSantis’s video also mocks Trump for standing up for Caitlyn Jenner’s right to choose her own bathroom and allowing transgender women to compete in Miss Universe pageants. Jenner has denounced DeSantis’s video and accused it of using ‘horribly divisive tactics!’ ‘DeSantis has hit a new low,’ Jenner tweeted. Over the weekend, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg also took a swipe at DeSantis’s video , by saying: ‘I’m going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders and just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space. ‘Which is, again, who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off? And what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?’ Buttigieg told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday (2 July). Additional reporting from agencies