TransTainment! 12/20/21
Isis King
Isis King stars in a major new show portraying a transgender character. Last Friday (Dec. 17) viewers saw King play a lead role in Amazon Prime Video’s new romcom, With Love. Her character is Sol Perez, a nonbinary oncologist.
In 2008 King was living in a homeless shelter and had no idea that one day, even though modeling and acting were things she aspired to, she would star in a television series. Her breakthrough came when she got a spot on America’s Next Top Model and became the first transgender contestant to walk their runway.
With Love follows siblings Lily (Emeraude Toubia) and Jorge Diaz (Mark Indelicato), who are both looking for love. King plays their transgender femme cousin, who is also on a quest for true love, in her case with a dashing doctor who is a coworker. Learn more about Isis King and the new show from The Undefeated website.
Maddy Morphosis
RuPaul’s Drag Race is back with season 14. Of course the show has assembled a fabulous cast of killer queens but one of the contestants is getting extra notice from the press. Maddy Morphosis is the first heterosexual queen to compete on the show. As in not gay but a straight man who looks awesome presenting himself as a woman. Maddy is from Fayetteville, Ark. and mixes glamor with comedy drag. Meet Maddie and the rest of the cast in an article from Variety.
It’s not easy being transgender (or any sort of non-straight) in Ghana. The country is very homophobic and in the eyes of its citizens if you dress like a woman you must be gay. Just this past January the police raided and shut down an LGBT rights office and community center. Even worse, lawmakers introduced a bill to parliament in August that promotes conversion therapy and aims to criminalize the “promotion, advocacy, funding, and act of homosexuality in all its forms.”
Angel Maxine
Standing up against this kind of oppression isn’t easy but one transgender woman stands proudly against the country’s anti-LGBT actions. Angel Maxine is “Ghana’s first openly transgender musician”. Maxine is currently working on her debut album. Her best-known single is Wo Fie but she is still better known for being Ghana’s first openly transgender musician than for her music. She says the songs on the album aren’t going to all be about LGBT issues, “The only thing the album is going to be all about is love. Essentially, I’m giving listeners love on the album, but they should know. . .that this love also means that a man can love a man, and a woman can also love a woman.” Read more about Angel Maxine on the African Arguments website.
Wilder Yari
Viewers of The CW’s 4400 have certainly noticed actor Wilder Yari, who portrays by-the-book Department of Homeland Security Agent Jessica Tanner in the new sci-fi series. Yari identifies as non-binary and transgender. Most recently they were seen in the second season of The L Word: Generation Q. Yari has previously appeared in the 2019 short film Treacle, which got attention after being screened at various film festivals. Meanwhile, Yari’s ambitions also extend behind the camera; their feature film script neem-rooni was chosen as a semi-finalist for the Sundance Institute’s 2021 Creative Producing Lab, and Yari is preparing to direct the project in the near future. Learn more about Wilder Yari and 4400 from The List website
Sruthy Sithara
Sruthy Sithara became the first Indian to win a pageant that celebrates trans activism across the world. Last week, Sithara became the first Indian to ever win the Miss Trans Global title. Miss Trans Global is an international pageant for transgender women, with the 2021 edition seeing contestants from 16 countries. Sithara’s story is similar to that of many transgender women. She came out first on Facebook, made other trans friends at college and then came out to her family.
After graduating she was hired as a project assistant at the Kerala government’s transgender cell [agency], becoming the first transgender person in the state’s history to have that job. “I was among the first four transgender people to receive a job in the government’s social justice department,” she said. “I was very proud of myself for making it because it’s very hard for a transgender person to get a government job.” Learn more from Vice.
Aria B. Cassadine
Alyssa Washington gave us a tip about RuPaul’s new streaming show Queen of the Universe. It’s a live-singing drag competition in which contestants won’t lip sync for their lives. The first season of the show can be seen on VH1 and Paramount+. New episodes drop every Thursday. One of the 13 contestants is Atlanta-based queen Aria B. Cassadine. Other contestants came from all over the world and the show was shot in London. Learn more about the show and Cassadine in particular from Project Q Atlanta.
That’s it for this edition of TransTainment! See you all in the new year.
Category: Transgender Community News
About the Author (Author Profile)
Angela Gardner is a founding member of The Renaissance Transgender Assoc., Inc., former editor of its newsletter and magazine, Transgender Community News. She was the Diva of Dish for TGF in the late 1990s and Editor of LadyLike magazine until its untimely demise. She has appeared in film and television shows portraying TG characters, as well as representing Renaissance on numerous talk shows.Subscribe
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