Ryan Murphy‘s new Netflix limited series, Halston, was released on Friday, chronicling the life of fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick. Ahead of the show’s release, Halston’s family voiced their displeasure with the depiction of the late designer after seeing a trailer for the project, and series star Ewan McGregor has spoken out in response, telling the Associated Press that the family’s response was “a shame.”
“I’m sad about it because I feel like we were so meticulous,” he said, sharing that series director Daniel Minahan had been wanting to make the project for 20 years and had spoken to some of Halston’s family members. “I don’t know that they’ve seen it,” he continued. “I don’t know what it is that they’re not happy about. I feel like it’s a shame, because I would like to think that they would like it. We took such care with it.” McGregor added that there were “lots of people interviewed in the preparation” and he himself “spoke to as many people as I could who knew Halston.” “A lot of people who knew him do like what we’ve come up with,” he concluded. “It made me sad to hear that.”
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McGregor had pointed out that Minahan spoke to Halston’s late brother Robert Frowick, who died in 2007, in the late ’90s while developing the project, but the Associated Press reports that his widow denies her husband was ever consulted. Several days before the series premiered, the Halston Archives released a statement by Lesley Frowick, Halston’s niece and CEO of the archives that read, “The HALSTON Archives and Family were not consulted on the upcoming Netflix series involving an inaccurate, fictionalized account of famed fashion designer, ‘Halston.’”
Frowick told WWD that she was unaware of who the show had approached. “They approached some people from the quote-unquote inner circle, but I don’t know who they are,” she said. “They did not approach us at all so this is in fact an unauthorized series about my uncle’s life and touching on fiction, I guess. Salacious things sell. It’s sad that so many people are trying to monetize on that.”
In addition to the criticism from Halston’s family, there had been concern that McGregor, who is straight, had been cast as a gay man. During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the publication quoted Billy Porter at a 2019 Actors Roundtable saying, “Straight men playing gay — everyone wants to give them an award.” McGregor responded, “If it had been a story about Halston’s sexuality more, then maybe it’s right that gay actors should play that role. But in this case — and I don’t want to sound like I’m worming out of this, because it’s something I did think a lot about — I suppose, ultimately, I felt like it was just one part of who he was.”
