Betsy West’s liberal friends were aghast when she took the role. They wanted to know how she could possibly play such a terrible person.
In “The Cake,” West plays Della, a North Carolina baker in a politically red town who doesn’t want to make a wedding cake for a younger female friend who is as close to her as a daughter — because the friend is marrying a woman.
The character’s beliefs are about as far from West’s as they could get. West doesn’t go to church, believes in marriage equality and voted for Hillary Clinton. The only thing more foreign to her would be playing a racist, she says.