Readers of Martha Wells‘ bestselling Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning series The Murderbot Diaries are baffled by the decision to cast The Northman actor Alexander Skarsgård, a cisgender man, as the titular genderless android in the upcoming live-action adaptation from Apple TV+.
On December 14, Apple TV+ officially announced that it had picked up ten episodes of the science fiction drama Murderbot. Set to be directed by the Academy Award-nominated creators and directors of About a Boy, brothers Chris and Paul Weitz, the action-packed urban fantasy series centers on a genderless self-hacking security android, played by Skarsgård, who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable clients.
In the upcoming Apple TV+ series, which appears to be based on the Wells series’ first novella, All Systems Red, “Murderbot must hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe.”
Although Murderbot fans are mostly hyped about the announcement of the sci-fi series, some have also taken to social media to express confusion about the casting of Skarsgård as Murderbot, an android with no sexual characteristics, which prefers “it” pronouns. In sci-fi, some androids are clearly gendered, like Star Trek’s Data, who desires to be seen as a cisgender human man and makes it known that he has sex organs, and they’re “fully functional.” However, the opposite is true for Murderbot. Designed without sexual characteristics, it explicitly does not want to be humanized (in Murderbot Diaries, only sex bots are designed with sex organs).
“This isn’t an ‘Oh, I didn’t picture Murderbot this way; therefore, it’s bad casting’ thing,” wrote one fan on X (formerly Twitter). “It’s a ‘you are adapting a series with a cast of mostly non-white, non-men characters, and all of your writers/directors/producers are white men, and you’ve cast a white cis man to play a nonbinary (most likely non-white character) whose gender identity/lack thereof is a central part of the story and its character’ thing.”
If the concept of preferred pronouns can be applied to a fictional character, certainly, Murderbot’s preferred pronouns seem to be “it.” In addition to referring to itself with it pronouns, other characters who interact with Murderbot consistently use “it” when referring to the SecUnit, as well, with a few illustrative exceptions. For example, seeing Murderbot without its armor for the first time, a human crew member asks, “Who is this?” rather than “What is this?” Here, the crew member’s momentary lapse into human reference, which is uncomfortable for everyone involved in the interaction, emphasizes Murderbot’s decision to present as human so that its human crew mates feel more comfortable it. While reflecting on this interaction with its human crew mates, it thinks, “It’s easier to pretend I’m a robot.”
In the English language, it pronouns are generally reserved for things, not beings. However, as Murderbot posits in All Systems Red, if people saw the SecUnit as equivalent to “a piece of mining equipment,” using its preferred pronouns would be a simple affair. Except, people often don’t see androids as simple machines, but sentient beings with free will. And in America, people are uncomfortable using it pronouns for agentive beings, instead wanting to assign gendered pronouns to anything seen as having free will.
A poignant example of the linguistic entanglement between gender and being-ness is how, when Jane Goodall first tried to get her studies published referring to chimpanzees as he or she, she was challenged by editors of scientific journals, who insisted on referring to each chimp as “it.” Goodall, the badass that she is, didn’t listen. Instead, upon getting the editorial corrections, she would stubbornly change the words back “to rescue the chimpanzees from ‘thing-ness’ and restore them to ‘being-ness,'” according to research cited in Holly Sawyer and Emily Thomas’ 2015 article “Murderbot pronouns: A snapshot of changing gender conventions in the United States.
So, why then is the pinnacle of masculanity set to star as Murderbot?
Well, it seems Skarsgård enjoys challenging traditional notions of masculanity. Not only did his role in The Northman take on traditional notions of masculanity, but he’s also on record saying that he can’t stand toxic masculinity and hates “alpha dudes” who act like “Silverback Gorillas.” Then, in 2015, the actor showed up to the 2015 premiere of Diary of a Teenage Girl in drag, wearing a Farrah Fawcett-inspired sparkly gold dress, blonde wig, and ‘70s glam make-up. Several years later, when Conan O’Brien asked the actor on TBS why he decided to wear drag to the premiere, the actor laughed hard and said,
The first AD on that movie is Cousin Wonderlette, a legendary drag queen in San Francisco. She was hosting [the premiere] with all her drag queen friends, and there was just something about the excitement about getting ready for the premiere as I was sitting there in my gray suit. They were talking about their wigs and their dresses and everything, and I felt left out. So, I asked Cousin, ‘Can I play? Can I be a part of this?’ and she said yes.
But does a cis man’s desire to explore gender roles through his acting roles outweigh the need for representation? No, at least not until nonbinary and agender actors are getting as much work as the their cisgender counterparts. Yet, Skarsgård was cast although several agender and nonbinary performers would have been more interesting and fitting casting choices for the series, including the fan-favorite choice for Murderbot, nonbinary Puerto Rican actor Vico Ortiz.
(featured image: Tor/Focus Features)
