On-screen diversity has hardly been the rosiest topic of conversation in recent months. Still, no one can deny that it’s been an awesome few months for the visibility of transgender characters. Amazon’s wonderful Transparent has sympathetically portrayed the trans experience with a cast of phenomenal trans (and cisgender) actors including Hari Nef, Alexandra Billings, and Trace Lysette. The Wachowski sisters are currently filing Season 2 of Netflix series Sense8 with trans actress and model Jamie Clayton. Eric Schaeffer’s Boy Meets Girl introduced us to former YouTube documentarian Michelle Hendley. Now Laverne Cox has scored a(nother) home run for the community with a role in CBS series Doubt. With news that the legal drama pilot has officially been picked up by the network, Cox becomes the very first trans woman to star as a reoccurring trans character on broadcast television.
The Orange Is the New Black trailblazer will star opposite leads Katherine Heigl and Steven Pasquale in the new series from Grey’s Anatomy‘s Tony Phelan and Joan Rater. As per Deadline‘s summary of the show’s premise: “A smart, chic, successful defense lawyer at a boutique firm starts to fall for her charismatic client who may or may not be guilty of a brutal crime.” Cox’s own role hasn’t yet been revealed, but in the meantime you can look forward to seeing her as Dr. Frank-n-Furter in Fox’s television remake of the Rocky Horror Picture Show — a role Cox alluringly describes as “the love child of Grace Jones and David Bowie.”
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Text Hannah Ongley
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