Last week it was announced that
Laverne Cox, Orange is the New Black breakout
and transgender role model, has been tapped to co-star in CBS’ legal drama Doubt. Cox will star as Cameron Wirth, a
role specifically created for a transgender actress. The role marks Cox’s largest part to date
following her Emmy nomination in July for her part in Orange is the New Black, becoming the first openly transgender
actress to garner such recognition from the TV academy.
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| Laverne Cox cast in big broadcaster CBS's new drama. |
Diversity, transgender in particular, seems to be a major theme
in the recent pilot season in the US. After successes such as Empire, How to Get Away With Murder and Transparent.
Broadcast networks in particular look to be investing in becoming more
representative and court new audiences. With Doubt being suggested as one of the strongest up and coming pilots
for next season, with offers to some big names and Greys Anatomy writers on board.
So why does it seem television
programmers are using transgender story lines and actors as a device to pull in
audiences?
It seems Amazon’s recent highly
acclaimed and Golden Globe winning drama series Transparent has a little something to do with it. The show seemed to be a pivotal point on the
transgender tipping point. It was a huge and bold risk for Amazon, which had
tried and failed to get recognition for its previous original content programs.
And Transparent seems to have started a running theme. Similar to gay and lesbian
characters who were in the spotlight in the nineties, with shows like Wills and Grace, transgender characters
are increasingly in the spotlight today, from Alex Newell and Dot Jones in Glee, Tom
Phelan in The Fosters and Tony Sawicki in Orphan
Black.
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| Jeffery Tambour plays Maura Pfefferman, transitioning trans-women and parent |
When talking about commissioning Transparent, Amazon comedy
supervisor Joe Lewis said it being about a transgender person was a big hook
for the show. "It allows you to tell a story that you haven't told before," he says. "I think that makes it more exciting to watch." It seems then that being gay and or
lesbian is not quite as new and different as it once was and audiences want to
see something different and something they don’t really know that much about. Transgender falls perfectly in these categories.
This
is overwhelmingly positive for the trans community after a significant lack of representation for the past few years. With GLAAD concluding portrayals of transgender
characters from 2002 to 2012 had a massive 54% containing negative representations, with
another 35% being ‘problematic’. But
GLAAD’s recently released ‘Trans Images on TV’ report suggested an improvement,
with only six of the thirteen episodes with transgender characters classed as
containing negative representation. They also had special praise for the portrayal of transgender characters as seen on ABC Family's The Fosters, Fox's Glee and Showtime's House of Lies and praised the casting of transgender actresses Laverne Cox and Erika Ervin in non-trans roles on MTV's Faking It and FX's American Horror Story: Freak Show. But mainly cited the "groundbreaking" material of online streamers such as Amazon's Transparent and Netflix's Orange is the New Black.
Transparent Trailer
But even
though the majority of transgender characters and stories at the moment does
seem to be from online outlets such as Amazon and less on airing TV networks,
there still seems to be a positive rise of trans voices. Good, not only for the
trans community but it seems to working for the big television bosses as well. With British television programmers being so enamoured by the trans boom and popularity in America, our very own BBC will be making a new groundbreaking sitcom following a transgender women. Finally we are seeing positive and popular television shows that allow the transgender community to gain a voice in America and Britain!
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| Actor and stand-up comedian Rebecca Root will star in the BBC series. |
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