Jeremy Strong has some nuanced thoughts about heterosexual actors playing gay characters.

The Succession star is being both praised and excoriated on social media for his opinion that the criticism about straight actors playing gay people is valid. In the upcoming Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice , Strong, who is straight, portrays a man who was gay in real life.

Yes, its absolutely valid, Strong told the Los Angeles Times on Monday . Im sort of old fashioned, maybe, in the belief that, fundamentally, its [about] a persons artistry, that great artists, historically, have been able to, as it were, change the stamp of their nature.

Thats your job as an actor, he added. The task, in a way, is to render something that is not necessarily your native habitat ... While I dont think that its necessary [for gay roles to be played by gay performers], I think that it would be good if that were given more weight.

Strong best known for his role on HBOs Succession as Kendall Roy, the spiritually broken heir to a media empire fortune was cast last year in The Apprentice as the infamous right-wing political fixer Roy Cohn , a closeted gay man.

Cohn was integral to the so-called Lavender Scare of the 1950s, where Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) spearheaded a moral panic about homosexual people in government. Cohn also remained silent about the 1980s AIDS crisis, until he himself died in 1986, at age 59, from AIDS-related complications.

Strong said he has considered the complexities of the modern discourse about straight actors portraying gay people, as no publicly out gay actor has ever won an Oscar for doing so in the 96-year history of the awards. Meanwhile, there have been nine straight men who won Oscars for portraying gay people.