Actor who ‘refused to play gay role’ loses Tribunal
An actor who was fired from her leading role in stage performance The Color Purple over homophobic Facebook posts has lost her claims of religious discrimination, breach of contract and harassment.
Seyi Omooba had been due to play the lead character Celie, who is a lesbian in the original novel, but was dismissed after she wrote a post on Facebook saying she did not “believe you can be born gay” and that she did not “believe homosexuality is right”.
The Central London Employment Tribunal rejected Omooba’s claims that her sacking by Leicester’s Curve Theatre amounted to discrimination against her religious beliefs, as she is a staunch Christian. It concluded the reasons why she was dismissed were because of the “effect of the adverse publicity from [the 2014 post’s] retweet, without modification or explanation, on the cohesion of the cast, the audience’s reception, the reception of the producers” and the “good standing and commercial success” of the production.
On the harassment claims, the panel ruled the Leicester Theatre Trust “did not have the purpose of violating the claimant’s dignity or creating an intimidating or humiliating environment for her”; instead, the trust’s purpose was “to save the production”.
It emerged during the Tribunal hearings that Seyi Omooba had previously told her agents that she would refuse to play any role if she thought the character was gay. She has since been let go from her agency.
Omooba had tried to sue the theatre for her original £4,309 full salary for the production, plus a further £25,000 for injury to feelings and reputational damages. She also sued her former agency for £98,752 for loss of earnings, future losses, injury to feelings and reputational damage.
The Employment Tribunal dismissed Omooba’s demands for compensation as it said:
“There is no financial loss because she would not have played the part. There is no loss of opportunity to enhance her reputation by performing because she would not have played the part. If there is damage to her reputation, it was not caused by being dropped from the production but by an unconnected person’s tweeting… of her Facebook post and the outcry resulting from that.”
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