Trans actress Candis Cayne has revealed that she left an audition for Curb Your Enthusiasm because the role would have required her to represent her community in an inauthentic way. The guest spot in an episode of Larry David’s acclaimed comedy series, which ran on HBO from 2000 to 2011, involved an offensive-sounding toilet joke.
“The part was for a trans woman who had to go to the bathroom really bad and decided she was going to go in the men’s line because it was quicker,” Cayne told The Hollywood Reporter, before recalling the firm but gracious way she handled a potentially awkward situation. “I said, ‘Thank you for writing a trans part, but I can’t audition because a trans woman wouldn’t do this. I have to honor my community,’ and I walked out of the audition.” The actress then said of her dilemma: “You’re always fighting this because you want to work, but you also want to be honest.”
Cayne, who became the first trans actress to play a recurring trans character on a primetime show when she was cast as Carmelita in 2007’s Dirty Sexy Money, went on to reveal that fellow trans actress Alexandra Billings had also left the Curb Your Enthusiasm audition for the same reason: “I said, ‘Right on sister!'” More encouragingly, a representative for HBO has confirmed that the role in question never appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm because the scene in question was axed.
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