Trans in Film and TV 4/4/22

Ginger Minj in La Cage.

In showbiz the traditional way to get “discovered” is to do a lot of theater and try to get a casting director for television or the movies to attend you show. For several drag queens things have worked the other way around. Ginger Minj, Bob the Drag Queen, Peppermint, Nina West, and other RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants have used their television appearance on the show to open doors for roles on stage. From regional theaters to London’s West End these queens are strutting their hours on the stage. Learn more about the story from American Theatre.

Elliot Page starred as Vanya on the first two seasons of The Umbrella Academy. With season three set to premier on June 22 fans have been wondering if Page would be crossing the gender border to play the cisgender female part. Page has cleared things up with a tweet introducing Viktor Hargreeves whose pronouns are he/him. Get more on the story from CNN.

Evie Macdonald

Evie Macdonald made history by being the first transgender actor to play a lead role in any Australian program when she portrayed a transgender high school kid in a short TV show titled First Day in 2017. Now she’s back in a First Day mini series that picks up where the short video left off. Learn more about Macdonald and the show from IMDB.

The glamorous world of showbiz may look like a lot of fun from the outside but when you’re trying to make a living at it things can get rough. Rebecca Root, who got her big break with Boy Meets Girl, said in a recent interview that until she got that part she had been struggling. She said in the interview, ”It’s a precarious and tough enough industry anyway without you being trans or transitioning.” For more on the story visit Sunday World.

Maya Henry

A Canadian film making the rounds of the festival circuit is Dawn, her Dad & the Tractor. The story focuses on Dawn, a young trans woman who returns to the family farm in the Canadian Maritimes after her mother dies. She left before she started her transition and is meeting her father and sister for the first time as her true self. The film’s director is Shelley Thompson who drew on the advice and insight provided by her transgender son. She says without his input she couldn’t have made the film. The title role is portrayed by trans actress Maya Henry. Henry is also a social media content creator who has over 200,000 subscribers on YouTube and has garnered over 27 million views. Learn more from the CBC.

Kayleigh McKee

Kayleigh McKee is a trans voice actress who stars in Jujutsu Kaisen 0. The animated film is a prequel to the hugely popular 2020 anime series Jujutsu Kaisen which is currently the 9th highest-grossing anime film in Japan of all-time and was the series Anime of the Year in 2021. McKee previously starred as Pina in Netflix’s Beastars. In Jujutsu Kaisen 0 she voices the starring role of Yuta Okkotsu. Learn more about her at pride.com. Take a look at the trailer below.

Juliany Taveras

Felix Ever After is a YA novel that was published in 2020 and tells the story of a Black, queer and transgender high school student while exploring themes including falling in love and bullying. Time has listed it as one of the best 100 young adult novels of all time. It’s popularity has led to a series adaption on Amazon. That project is the first one undertaken by Juliany Taveras who recently signed a deal with Amazon to develop and produce film and TV scripts for the platform. Taveras is a Dominican American writer and queer/trans person from the Afro-Indigenous diaspora. They are from Brooklyn, New York, and focus their work on bodies in/of diaspora, and the pursuit of Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty. Learn more from The Hollywood Reporter.

Actress Alexandra Billings has written a memoir titled This Time For Me (Topple Books, 429 pp. The book dropped on April 1 and covers her journey from Illinois to California contains many layers, both harmonious and horrifying. Read about her life and the book in USA Today.

Sandra Pankhurst

Sandra Pankhurst is a transgender woman from Australia who started a cleaning service that takes on the messiest crime scene cleanups. It’s called Specialized Trauma Cleaning and is based in Melbourne. In the beginning, 30 years ago, she was running the service out of her home and a van. Today she has a warehouse headquarters and several cleaning crews. Australian documentarian Lachlan McLeod has made a film about Pankhurst and her company. It’s titled Clean and in it the director focuses on both the nature of Sandra’s cleaning service and her life story. She was given up for adoption by her birth mother, but then while still a boy, rejected by her adoptive family after they had their own children. Unfairly punished for her half-siblings’ mischief she was forced to sleep outside in a bungalow. The abuse caused her to grow malnourished and prone to infections. Neighbors had to save her from being stabbed by the alcoholic, abusive father. Get the full story on Pankhurst and the film from The Hollywood Reporter.

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Tags: featured, film, television, Transgender

Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment