Is it fair to condemn an actor for taking on a paid role in a Christian propaganda film if he doesn’t espouse those beliefs himself?

In 2015, when evangelist Ray Comfort made an anti-LGBTQ film, he said he wanted to cast real actors instead of “Christian” actors because he didn’t want a crappy final product. It turned out the real actors he hired were actively supportive of LGBTQ rights.

When I spoke with the film’s lead, he told me he wasn’t shown the script in advance but he also didn’t want to say no to a lead role in a film. He also figured he was playing a character. This was his job, he said, so it didn’t matter that he personally didn’t agree with the film’s premise.

I thought about that when reading this extraordinary interview by Marlow Stern of The Daily Beast with actor Jamie Kennedy, who appears in the right-wing anti-abortion propaganda film Roe v. Wade. Kennedy has appeared in Scream and hosted a TV prank show with his name in the title — you either love him or pay no attention to his work. Stern’s basic line of questioning is why Kennedy, who’s not a conservative zealot, would appear in a movie that spreads so many right-wing lies.