December 2, 2020 | Health Matters

Celebrities join forces to battle HIV stigma

Several stars have come together to help fight the stigma associated with HIV and AIDS. Hillary Clinton, Lena Waithe, Russell Tovey and several others created a video based on the play The Inheritance, which examines love between gay men in New York as the AIDS epidemic hit.

The video was shared yesterday, on World AIDS Day.

Playwright Matthew Lopez, the AIDS Memorial and the Broadway production team behind The Inheritance worked with 33 famous people who interpreted the main character's moving monologue.

“To commemorate World AIDS Day, we have taken Walter’s speech at the end of Act One of The Inheritance, divided it into 33 sections, and asked friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to record themselves delivering a short section," explained the AIDS Memorial. “We call the resulting video ‘The Walter Project’.”

“Everybody shot everything in April and May, so it was the height of the first wave [of the pandemic]. I think, at that time, everyone was just so desperate to connect to someone, to their craft, to each other,” López said. “We had not left theaters all too long ago, and I think there was, in the moment, a tremendous fear that we might lose a lot of our connection to theater.”