Before I begin talking about Laurence Fox, I want to mention why I am covering him in the first place. There have been many substacks and Twitter threads and the like on TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) and celebrities going TERF: JK Rowling and Graham Linehan are some examples. It makes sense, given the anti-trans panic we are in, both in the United Kingdom (also known colloquially as TERF Island for its anti-trans hatred), as well as the United States. Anti-trans laws have burgeoned in the past two years, as an alliance of Republicans, TERFS, and weed-smoking libertarians has come together to limit trans people’s access to healthcare, both for transitioning and for treatment of other issues.
Given that this is Pride Month during a time of increased anti-trans hatred, I wanted to kick off my series “Tales of TERF Island” to cover a TERF/far-right celebrity that is a bit dear to my heart because of his portrayal of Sergeant James Hathaway on Lewis: Laurence Fox. You can check the previous post where I announced this in a bit more detail, but to reiterate:
Tales of TERF Island will not only discuss transphobia but also the UK’s historical revisionism on its legacies of genocide in the British Empire. While the UK is Ground Zero on transphobia, I also wanted to mention its deep origins of transphobia in colonialism, despite this age we’re living in as a “post-imperial”, shit, even “post-colonial”, despite imperial systems governing us. I will tell you that I am looking into writing an essay about Caroline Elkins and Priyamavada Gopal’s treatment by British pro-imperialists, but if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below or DM me.
And now, the first part of my analysis on Laurence Fox, which I am calling “Lewis and Nepo Babies”. Some general content warnings for this miniseries, which I also stated in my previous post but also wanted to reiterate: transphobia, Nazi insignia (plus Nazis in general), classism, racism, anti-vaxxers, ableism, sexual harassment, heterosexism, sexism, fascism, screenshots of a terrible movie and general “famous male divorcee goes down some nasty rabbit holes” tropes. Take care of yourselves, and if a part of this article triggers you, please do what you need to do to take care of yourselves. Call a friend/member of your support system, engage in enjoyable activities, and if you need to seek additional help, in particular, peer support or hospitalization, please do so.
Before Laurence Fox was a right-wing activist, failed London mayoral candidate, founder of his political party—called the Reclaim Party— musician (Author’s Note: WHAT THE FUCK), and even before he critiqued 1917 for “(more on that in a bit), he was a nepo baby actor. If only he’d stuck to that.
His mother's and father’s sides had famous actors, talent agents, and producers. Some examples include the talent agent James Fox and the actress Angela Worthington, who is the daughter of the English playwright Frederick Lonsdale. He is also related to the TV presenter Emilia Fox and Freddie Fox through one of his uncles. To top off the acting and producing roles, his siblings work as actors or producers (his sister Lydia is married to the comedian Richard Ayoade, best known for his role as Maurice Moss in the Graham Linehan comedy The IT Crowd). So I can assume that, given the number of people in his family who were in the acting industry, it was no surprise when he became an actor. This did come after working a variety of odd jobs, including an office job and a gardening job.
After he graduated from RADA (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), he debuted in the psychological thriller film The Hole (2001). His credits include playing many “uniform” or soldier roles, from British soldiers in Deathwatch (2002) and Colditz (2005)to Nazis in Island at War (2004) and The Last Drop (2005). But I know him for playing Sergeant James Hathaway in the murder mystery Lewis, which ran from 2006-2015.
The series is set in the world of the fictional detective Inspector Morse, and Lewis is his detective sergeant, helping him investigate murders in Oxford. Lewis gives the eponymous character a chance to be a detective, with Fox playing his sergeant, James Hathaway. Hathaway is a theology graduate from Oxford and a former athlete who can get awkward with women. Those moments, as well as the ones between him and his supervisor Jean Innocent (played by Rebecca Front, who was also in my favorite British political comedy, The Thick Of It), are where you can see his intellect and social awkwardness. He also likes to show off his own
But at the same time, the genre of the murder mystery has its own ties to racism that Britain, especially White Britain, tries to ignore. This is something that Fox, born in a rich family that also had ties to Christian evangelicism, which has its own history of racism and colonialism, in particular with missionaries in the British Empire, would have known to ignore and relish in that, which you will see not only here but in his attempt at Blackface. I am thinking of Midsomer Murders’ producer Brian True-May saying that he would not cast Black people or members of other marginalized groups in his show because its drama “‘wouldn’t work’” in 2011, comments for which he got suspended. That’s the one that comes to mind, but I am also reminded that these shows are an alternative reality for an institutionally racist police force. What I intend to say here is that it is shocking but not surprising that an actor who plays a detective in such a bigoted system becomes a bigot himself.
As something to mention for later analysis, Fox got married to the actress Billie Piper in 2007 and has some children with her. They then got divorced in 2016, which gives him the fact that he’s a divorced dad. The divorced dad (TM) arc comes later in this saga, but I wanted to mention it before it becomes a part of our tale.
The turning point in Fox’s perception as a nepo baby actor to something of a problematic actor came when he criticized the movie 1917 (2019). I, like anyone else who likes history, love watching historical dramas and comedies (and then inevitably criticize them for historical inaccuracies). 1917 was no exception. When I watched it, I found it to be not only a well-acted film but an immersive look into life as a soldier during the First World War. While there are still living soldiers, civilians, and Holocaust survivors from the Second World War, there are none for the First. Therefore, movies like 1917 give us an understanding of what it was like to be in the horrors of trench warfare, the constant bombing and shelling turning everything into a wasteland out of some Biblical nightmare, the ineffective charges “over the top.”, insert your horrors of modern warfare here.
But for Fox, who was in a variety of uniform roles, 1917 was not realistic. At the beginning of 2020 on a podcast by a guy named James Delingpole, he stated that [there was a] oddness in the casting.” of one Sikh soldier in the movie. He then went on to defend his comments on Good Morning Britain, stating people “shouldn’t be afraid to say what they feel”, something that would later become a driving force of much of his public presence.
The truth is that World War One was a global war, and not just White guys from the Cotswolds or Oxford participated like the ones Fox portrayed. Soldiers came from not only England proper but also Ireland, South Africa, the West Indies, and India. In France, Senegal, and West African soldiers served in the French Army (and novels like David Diop’s international bestseller At Night All Blood is Black memorialize). These troops put the “World” in World War One, and suffered and died the same as their White comrades. They also ought to have their own stories told. In the case of the Sikh soldiers Fox took offense to, they made up 20% of the British Indian Army, which is about 130,000 Sikhs. They were simply not in there for what Fox’s comments implied as diversity points, or in his nice way of putting it, the Sikh casting “‘felt incongruous”, they were there because of their massive presence not only in the British Indian Army but in the British army writ large.
For the record, Fox did apologize for his comments, calling them “‘clumsy’”. Just not the ones he had later that year. Or the next year. Or the year after that. Or the-okay, you get it, this guy is going to say *a lot* of at best problematic and at worst downright harmful things, one of which will lead to him losing a libel lawsuit against a drag queen, among others.—
Coming soonish…How one goes down the rabbit hole and ruins friendships (and furthers one’s exile from the thing that made you famous in the first place). Featuring nasty tweets with every bigotry you can think of and a horrendous mayoral campaign.