Pop Culture Fix: Laverne Cox, Angelica Ross, and Jen Richards Want To Be In The Room Where It Happens
The Room Where It Happens
I just want to say that my main celebrity crush is Jen Richards and I know it’s unprofessional to say you have a celebrity crush but every time I write about Jen Richards without revealing to you that she is my celebrity crush I feel like I am not being completely honest with you and so I’m just going to go ahead and get it out there. Jen Richards is my celebrity crush and has been ever since I moderated a panel she was on at A-Camp this spring and that doesn’t mean I can’t be even-handed when reviewing or critiquing every perfect thing she creates, okay?
For example, the best episodes in Nashville‘s history, which Jen will star in this coming season when the show moves to CMT. She’s CMT’s first out trans actress! She’ll play a “tough but understanding physical therapist” named Allyson who helps a main character “through one of their most difficult challenges.”
It’s very easy to see how Her Story led to her role on Nashville. While the web series didn’t win the Emmy on Sunday night, its success is going to literally open doors into casting offices and writers rooms for trans actresses and writers, especially Jen Richards and Angelica Ross.
#GirlsLikeUs repping at the #CreativeArtsEmmys. @HerStoryShow @angelicaross pic.twitter.com/sdcxnRMkoU
— Jen Richards (@SmartAssJen) September 11, 2016
(Mey always teases me for calling Jen Richards “Jen,” like I’m on a first-name basis with her, but now that my crush is out in the open, I feel okay about it.)
Also, while we’re talking about growing trans representation and opening doors, Fast Company interviewed Laverne Cox about her upcoming role in the Rocky Horror remake and led with this headline: Laverne Cox: “I Just Wanted To Get In The Room,” which, of course, echos what so many trans actors and trans writers have been saying for years. You’re not going to find trans women with A-list cred to play trans women in big budget movies if you don’t let trans women in the door to audition for small TV roles that lead to big TV roles, like everyone else. It’s a very good interview, I think, because it covers so many of Laverne’s upcoming projects, her career so far, and it’s not afraid to talk about her activism.
I remember having a conversation years ago with my brother about this. I’m political anyway, so the question was: Do I speak up, do I speak out? [There had never been] a conversation in the mainstream media that challenged the ways in which trans stories were told. I wanted to change that, to create space for myself as a full, multi-dimensional human being, and hopefully give other trans people space to do that as well. A lot of it is just about seeing a need and speaking out, ’cause somebody’s gotta do it. It’s a civic responsibility.
Also, this is the most brilliant answer to “What inspires you?” Laverne: “I love excellence.”
Being on the red carpet at the Emmys is a huge deal. Not only does having your name attached to “Emmy-nominated” make people pay attention, but when you’re there, in person, looking oh so gorgeous, people are forced to pay attention. If you want to find out how to do Angelica Ross’ glamorous ponytail, Fashion Bomb Daily’s got you covered, for example. Just these subtle acts of celebrating trans women in everyday life helps conquer the bullshit GOP scapegoating and horrific trans storylines on our TV.
Teevee
+ Sue and Mel are leaving Great British Bake Off when it goes to Channel 4. I can’t talk about it.
+ Some queer things won some Creative Arts Emmys: Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi for Making a Murderer. Transparent for production design. Jessica Jones for theme music. ‘Til It Happens To You from The Hunting Ground for Best Song. The Wiz Live! for costumes. Also, Amy Poehler finally won an Emmy. And The People vs. O.J. Simpson cleaned up, which bodes well for Ms. Sarah Paulson.
+ Heather Matarazzo — who you probably remember most from The Princess Diaries, but who I will always remember as the person who led to the greatest Jenny Schecter meltdown of all time — has a new film in the works. It’s called Stuck.
+ While the New York Times is worried about the white men under siege on this fall’s new TV shows, WaPo is more concerned with the lack of visibility for disabled people.
+ Storm Reid is going to be the lead in Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time. It’s very exciting to see so many people of color associated with and cast in this project. In addition to Reid, Mindy Kaling and Oprah are two of the three heads of Madeleine L’Engle’s trinity-style endgame wizard.
Variety‘s Maureen Ryan, who has done outstanding work calling for diversity on TV in recent years, is really excited about 2017 TV.
These five programs all take on matters of race, sex, class, sexual orientation and other charged topics, but within the context of personal tales that have a hand-crafted, artisanal feel. Their tones, settings and worldviews vary, but we may have to officially retire our notions about comedy that “punches up” or “punches down.” These shows find a ton of fruitful dramatic and comedic potential in every direction. The artfully handled, unpredictable collisions are so often what make these shows outstanding.
Movies(?)
+ Here are some names associated with a short film about a fashion line? I think? Carrie Brownstein (director), Natasha Lyonne (model/actor), Rowan Blanchard (model/actor). AdWeek says it’s a “brilliantly creepy short film about internet fandom.” So, commercial?
https://youtu.be/VbfSRa5BRhk
Queer Folks, Out and About
+ El Sanchez made Yahoo!’s list of 4 Latinx comedians you should know, and if you’ve ever seen them at A-Camp, you’ll totally agree Yahoo!’s summary of their stand-up:
I recently saw Sanchez perform at The Bell House and it was the first time I didn’t want an opening act to leave the stage. (sorry, Hari) I’m pretty sure everyone else agreed with me because Kondabolu threatened to fire Sanchez when he noticed how much the audience loved them.
Hollywood Is Out of Excuses for Dangerous Trans Representation
It is a stone cold fact that pop culture representation of marginalized communities affects the real lives of people in those communities. On a personal level, humans have an intrinsic need to see themselves represented in stories; it’s how we figure out how to move through the world. On a broader level, depictions of marginalized people on TV and in film inform the way our culture views and treats minorities. GLAAD confirms this year after year with the research they put into their Where We Are On TV reports. Support of marriage equality in the United States, for example, rose in almost direct proportion to the number of gay characters on TV, and when GLAAD surveyed Americans who’d changed their minds about same-sex marriage, they found that “knowing” a gay TV character was commensurate to knowing a gay person in real life (and people are much less likely to support anti-gay legislation when they know a gay person).
It’s because of this irrefutable reality that trans women are, once again, being forced to speak out against a major film that will feature a cis man playing a trans women. The film is called Anything and it’s based on Timothy McNeil’s play of the same name. In it, a grieving widower falls in love with a transgender sex worker. That transgender sex worker will be played by Matt Bomer. Mark Ruffalo is the executive producer.
Before we dig into this specific film, let me just throw some numbers at you. According to a months-long deep dive Riese did earlier this year, of the 105 trans women we’ve seen in all of TV history, 59% of them have been subjected to hate speech, 68% of them have been intentionally misgendered, and almost half of them fall into the “deceptive trans person” trope. Prior to 2001, a trans woman had never played a trans woman on TV. Since then, only 20% of fictional trans women on TV have been played by actual trans women, and the most popular and critically acclaimed TV and films about trans women — Transparent, Dallas Buyer’s Club, The Danish Girl — all star cis men in the leading trans role.
Stories don’t happen inside a vacuum, so it’s important to contextualize those bleak numbers with what’s happening in the real world. 2016 has already seen the murder of at least 19 trans people in the United States, which means we’re on track to break last year’s already record-breaking year of reported trans murders. (We wrote more obituaries for murdered trans women last year than recaps for any single TV show we cover.) North Carolina implemented HB2, but it wasn’t an isolated incident. Over 50 anti-trans bills were introduced into state legislatures this year. Many of them were “bathroom bills,” but others tried to halt transition-related healthcare for incarcerated trans people or deny trans people the basic rights to their vital records.
Trans women face a trifecta of oppression every single day: toxic pop culture representation, bigoted legislation, and the threat of horrific violence.
That’s the world Matt Bomer and Mark Ruffalo’s new movie is landing in.
On Twitter earlier this week, Her Story actress and co-writer Jen Richards — who auditioned for a role in Anything — articulated the problems with casting cis men to play trans women.
She posted a video — that Laverne Cox retweeted — to unpack the discussion further. In it, she reiterates that it is most often Black and brown trans women, often those who are poor, and often those who sleep with men, who are the most at risk for being murdered.
https://youtu.be/nLzM7BuNdIo
Both Ruffalo and Bomer seem surprised by the backlash to anything, which feels a little disingenuous given that even the most cursory research would have shown him how troubling it is to the trans community when cis men play trans women. But while Bomer has taken to blocking all dissenters on social media, including very well known trans actors and activists, Ruffalo seems more open to a conversation. At the end of her video and her Twitter statement, Jen Richards asked him to reach out to her.
There are other encouraging things about the response to Anything.
Firstly, the outcry has been pretty universal and plenty of mainstream media outlets have picked up on the story, including The Hollywood Reporter; they published an op-ed from GLAAD’s Nick Adams titled “Matt Bomer and Men Who Play Transgender Women Send a “Toxic and Dangerous” Message.”
But the most encouraging thing of all is that so many trans women can assert their rightful place in this conversation. Jen Richards declaring that she is the co-writer/co-EP/co-star of the Emmy-nominated web series Her Story at the beginning of her video is a huge deal. The bottom line in Hollywood is the bottom line. It’s all about the money. And so the argument goes that you can’t have a trans woman starring in a movie about trans women because there are no trans actresses, or that there are no trans actresses with names that are big enough to get studio funding. Trophies change the conversation. Her Story centers on the experiences of trans women, includes trans women in every step of the production process, and now it is nominated for an Emmy Award. Laverne Cox has also been nominated for an Emmy Award. Critical success isn’t reserved for cis men telling trans women’s stories. Trans actresses do exist and they are talented enough to pull down major award show nominations.
Anything has already been filmed. It will be in theaters. As will Michelle Rodriguez’s film, (Re)Assignment. Hollywood is not running out of ways to make movies than endanger trans women, but it is running out of excuses. The trans women who are being rightly lauded for their acting and writing and directing and producing are making damn sure of that.
A Day of Visibility: Jen Richards Gets Deep and Personal About North Carolina
This Thursday, March 31, is Trans Day of Visibility, a day that was created to celebrate the trans people who populate our families, our communities, our lives and our world. Autostraddle is a website for and about queer women, and that will always, always, include queer trans women. In order to highlight just a few of the trans women we love, respect and admire here at Autostraddle, we asked several to take pictures of a day or two in their lives and answer a few questions and we’ll also be featuring several essays related to trans visibility by trans women this week.
When I think about trans women who are creating positive change across the board for trans people, Jen Richards is one of the first people I think of. She’s great at writing and tweeting about trans issues; the webseries that she co-created, co-wrote and co-stared in, Her Story, is easily one of the best pieces of trans media I’ve ever seen; she was one of the creators of the Trans 100, which did wonders to bring awareness to good work that trans people are doing across the country; and those are just a few of the things she’s done. She’s really a miracle worker and a truly great leader.
The first time I met Jen in person in Los Angeles we went out for brunch, and I accidentally ordered some sunny side up eggs. I hate sunny side up eggs. But Jen is such a cool person that I wanted her to think I was cool too, so I ate all my eggs with a fake smile on my face. I wanted so desperately to make a good impression, so I was willing to eat one of my least favorite foods in the world. I hope it worked.
I’ve been in awe of her for a long time, but now that I’ve been able to talk to her in person and get to know her better, and now that I’ve seen her amazing work on Her Story, I’m simply blown away by how talented and impactful she is. When she writes and talks and creates media, she knows just how to get to the inner truth of things. When trans people’s lives are better in twenty years, we’ll look back and recognize Jen Richards as one of the reasons why. I’ve interviewed Jen before, and so I know that she gives great answers, so when she agreed to do this, I was overjoyed.
I had originally sent Jen some questions and asked her to do a similar thing to what Devan, Luna and I did over the past three days, but then, she sent me this yesterday and said “I hope this is alright.” Once you read it and realize that this is the kind of thing Jen does and hopes it’s just alright, you’ll realize why I’m so amazed by her.
TUESDAY, MARCH 22 – WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23
I’ve never been good at filtering information, anything new, a bit of news, an overheard conversation, can be like a pebble starting an avalanche in my brain, so my ability to function depends heavily on routine. Ideally, every morning would start like this particular Tuesday. I wake up, let my dog outside while I eat an orange. I come in and do my morning ritual, a combination of meditation and a little bit of occult magic, then a quick combination of squats, sit-ups and push-ups. I drink a cup of English Breakfast Tea as I write my Morning Pages, then turn on Take Two, my local NPR morning program, as I make an everything bagel, freshly chop green onions to mix into whipped cream cheese, and grind beans for a single pour-over cup of coffee, all of which I consume while watching last night’s Daily Show and checking Twitter.
That’s when I see the news that North Carolina has called for a special session to overrule an anti-discrimination ordinance passed in Charlotte, making it illegal for any city in the state to have such protections. The primary concern is the specter of men invading women’s restrooms. These come up all frequently, and they usually fail. It’s a scare tactic used by the right to provoke voter engagement, but there’s zero evidence of an issue to justify them, and they’re nearly impossible to enforce. Nonetheless, this one hits me in the gut. My family lives in North Carolina. I’m there several times a year, and had recently spent a month in Greensboro and Raleigh-Durham. Since my Mississippi birth certificate says “male,” the new bill would make it illegal for me to use public facilities designated for women. The bill hasn’t made national news yet, but I’m about as angry as I’ve ever been. It feels personal. I fire off a series of tweets to Governor Pat McCrory, as well as the North Carolina Values Coalition and some public supporters of the bill. The few replies I get make it clear that my arguments have zero impact. This issue will consume my consciousness for the following few days.
I’m supposed to meet my new writing agent in Beverly Hills, but she has to reschedule. Instead I go to one of the two cafes that I regularly work at, a small locally owned spot in Cypress Park. I’m meeting Devon, a filmmaker, close friend, and ex-boo. We often work together here. I also run into Jerrid, the boyfriend of my sister Zackary. He’s working on an essay about his relationship to her, which makes me smile. We all catch up briefly and then I try to work.
I’m supposed to be finishing a feature script, a love story about three trans women and the relationships they’re in. I’d submitted a synopsis and 10 pages of it to Outfest’s Screenwriting Lab competition and it made it through the first round. A complete script is due Thursday and I’m less than halfway through. Instead of writing, I end up back on Twitter, posting more about the North Carolina bill.
That evening I’m feeling weak and frayed and realize I forgot to eat lunch. A new ramen shop has just opened down the street from where I stay. I came to LA a year ago, without a car or job, and have been living out of suitcases, and largely off the charity of friends, ever since. No one has been more generous than a couple who let’s me stay in their guest room. He’s a trans guy and the one largely responsible, behind the scenes, for the best aspects of I Am Cait. She’s a lawyer who focuses on LGBT family law. They’ve been together for nine years, and I’m in awe that they still seem to genuinely enjoy each other. He’s out of the country on a new project, so she and I spend most evenings together. We go to the ramen shop. It’s delicious.
I feel a little better after food, but am still on edge. My mind keeps returning to North Carolina. On an unconscious level, as with the logic of dreams, I’ve associated supporters of the bill with my family. Though my mom and I are now closer than ever, it’s been a long road to get here. There was a time when she said she’d never call me Jen because, “Jen murdered my son.” In public I battle these kinds of responses to my existence with education, reason, rhetoric, advocacy, and art. In private, I’m wracked with shame, self-doubt and self-destruction. My mom proudly introduces me as her daughter now, but I still carry that guilt with me, and have internalized a lifetime of media declaring trans people jokes or monsters.
I call Bailey on FaceTime and break down into tears. I’m the kind of person who goes weeks without talking to the people I consider my closest friends, and spend far more time alone than with anyone, but for some reason Bailey and I text or talk several times a day. She may be the only person I have ever believed loves me unconditionally. She quickly has me laughing and Googling pictures of a rapper she’s currently crushing on. Suddenly I realize I’m supposed to leave in an hour for a red eye flight and haven’t packed yet.
Luckily, I haven’t really unpacked from last week’s trips to Boston and Buffalo, so I’m out the door on time. My housemate kindly offers to drive me to LAX and we pick up Laura on the way. Laura is the co-writer and co-star of Her Story and in a very real way, its inspiration. She once had a trans waitress at a restaurant in Chicago and wrote the moment into her web series Hashtag, which I was then cast in. Our very first meeting was caught on camera.
https://vine.co/v/iJ6UnIiQpKF
I instantly developed a crush on Laura, so when her producer asked me to write a web series about a trans lesbian, I asked Laura if she’d work on it with me. We opted to reserve any personal chemistry for the screen and discovered we’re particularly well suited for collaboration. Perhaps it’s because we’re both hyper-Aquarian and classically educated, but our brains often seem like halves of a whole.
We get to the airport and I begin getting anxious. As I and many other have discussed and detailed before, the TSA’s body scanning procedures cannot accommodate trans people. Half of the times I go through one, I’m flagged. Because I’m most often read as a cis woman, the screeners often apologetically show me the screen, a yellow box on my crotch indicating the “anomaly” and I am subject to a pat down. Since I travel a lot, my patience for being touched in public by a stranger has been steadily waning. While traveling back to LA last week I had a particularly invasive pat down. After the agent fully touched my genitals a third time I recoiled. She let me go, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of being violated. I decided I would opt-out of the body scan next time, in hopes that a general pat down would be less traumatizing than one focused on the area I don’t have the luxury of calling my “private parts.”
I keep rehearsing in my head what I’ll say if the agent asks why I don’t want to go through the body scan and settle on a casual “I just don’t like them” to avoid further scrutiny. When my turn comes up, I opt-out and am directed to stand in place until a female agent is available. After 10 minutes I’m taken aside and patted down. My best guess is that this is about the 25th time in the last three years. While I stand there enduring the process, I silently wonder what the cumulative cost of such additional “security” costs us. I’m cleared and try not to focus on the resentment I feel for having to choose between a short highly invasive violation of my body, or a longer, slightly less invasive one.
I can’t sleep on planes, so I read and watch a movie during the flight to the east coast. Laura’s brother picks us up at the airport. We’re doing a screening of Her Story at Keene State College that night, in central New Hampshire, and to save money we’re staying at Laura’s parent’s house.
I try to work on the script during the few hours we have at home, but I again get wrapped up in North Carolina. A few of my tweets have gone viral as the story becomes national news, so I’m getting a fair number of people in my mentions telling me I’m a man, how ugly and disgusting I am, etc. Given the sources, it’s about as hurtful as white noise. Laura pushes me to rest for a bit. I lay down, but my acting agent calls with information for an audition and then my brother begins texting me from the special session in Raleigh. He’s horrified by what he witnesses.
We make the two hour drive to Keene and meet up with Kate, the Executive Producer of Her Story, and one of the most made “bad-ass boss bitches” I’ve ever met. We have dinner with a group of students and staff and one trans girl from a local high school who is just beginning to come out. She knows some trans guys, but I’m the first trans woman she’s met in person. I take her aside, listen, and answer her questions. So much has changed in the short time since I came out. Young trans people today will have always seen people like them on the covers of magazines, get to see a few positive depictions on television. But they also have to see places like North Carolina paint us as predators who deserve neither safety nor dignity. Visibility has its benefits, but so did invisibility. She’s so excited to transition though, and it makes me remember my own enthusiasm. Being laughed at, chased, spit on, none of it gave me pause in my early days. The joy of finally being myself outshone all else.
There’s a good turnout for the screening. After having been up for over 30 hours, the stress of travel and my obsession with North Carolina, I’m verging on delirium. I’ve had Angelica with me at the last few events and I miss her presence. Next to Bailey, no one is a bigger part of my life. Angelica is the star of any room she’s in, bringing a degree of charisma and humor to conversations that never fails to awe me. I’m most at ease when she’s near. Nonetheless, I come alive during the Q&A. I always do, since it gives me an opportunity to talk about some of the issues that matter to me: racism, sex work, addiction, divisions within LGBT communities, domestic violence, depictions of trans people in the media and the importance of telling your own story. I use the bathroom several times during our night on campus. As a state university, I realize that if we were in North Carolina, this would be illegal. Going into a bathroom and peeing behind a closed door would be considered a threat to public safety. I can’t stop thinking about this.
We make the two hour drive back home. While the others stay up and enjoy a bottle of wine, I finally crash. Alone in my bed I realize that this was both the day I agreed to chronicle for Autostraddle and the four year anniversary of my own coming out. I think back on the events since I woke and wonder if they’ll make a good story.
Pop Culture Fix: The Xena Reboot Will Be GAY GAY GAY
Welcome to your weekly Pop Culture Fix, your one-stop shop for television feelings.
Teevee
+ Xena: Warrior Princess really is getting the reboot everyone’s been speculating about and it is going to be hella gay. Here’s a little tidbit from Variety:
NBC has ordered a new Xena pilot from writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach, architect behind the CW’s cult hit The 100, and he plans to be a little more forthcoming about the undeniable chemistry between Xena and Gabrielle with this updated iteration. During a Q&A session on Tumblr, Grillo-Marxuach confirmed that the two women would be lovers, no bones about it:
i am a very different person with a very different world view than my employer on the 100 – and my work on the 100 was to use my skills to bring that vision to life. xena will be a very different show made for very different reasons. there is no reason to bring back xena if it is not there for the purpose of fully exploring a relationship that could only be shown subtextually in first-run syndication in the 1990s. it will also express my view of the world – which is only further informed by what is happening right now – and is not too difficult to know what that is if you do some digging.
+ Speaking of The 100, fans mourning the death of Commander Lexa have turned their sorrow into activism. They’ve raised an astonishing $43,000(!) for the Trevor Project. You can donate through their campaign here.
+ Variety also covered Lexa’s death on The 100. It’s the first time I have ever seen a mainstream site (especially one with real clout) push back against this trope. It’s a really good read that examines fan reaction and takes the showrunner to task for his obtuseness.
+ Her Story won Best Drama at Seattle Web Fest, a well deserved honor!
+ Soon you’ll be able to own Marceline the Vampire Queen and her true love Princess Bubblegum in Lego form! A fan actually created these things and made it all the way through the Lego Ideas vetting process!
+ This new Orphan Black season four trailer is so slick, y’all. I’ve watched it like six times since Riese sent it to me. It seems to confirm Delphine’s death, but I’m just going to stay in denial about that for a while longer.
+ Hey hey hey, CBS has finally given Person of Interest season five a premiere date! They’re actually going to show it on Monday and Tuesday nights, starting on Tuesday, May 3rd. Usually when networks decide to burn through episodes like that, it means they’re done with the show, but J.J. Abrams says a miraculous ratings event could turn things around. The season is a truncated 13 episodes and promises some intense Root and Shaw shenanigans. [Update: As of 6pm, CBS has official cancelled POI. No season six, after all. But maybe Root and Shaw will ride off into the sunset!]
+ How white, conservative, and male are Sunday news talk shows without Melissa Harris-Perry? Flavorwire has the answer.
+ TV Land is rebooting Heathers. Heather McNamara will be a black lesbian. One Heather will be “a male who identifies as gender-queer whose real name is Heath.” (So you mean they are a genderqueer person named Heath, TV Land.)
Movies
+ We’re giving away five Carol DVDs, have you heard?
+ Cannes will debut Jodie Foster’s new film, Money Monster.
Queer People In The World
+ Laverne Cox is set to appear on Jane Lynch’s Hollywood Game Night this Sunday night!