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 Now Cox is lending her voice to "The T Word," airing on
Viacom Inc's youth-orientated MTV and Logo TV on Friday, a
documentary profiling young transgender kids who transitioned in
their teen years.
From 18-year-old Ari in New York and Kye, 24, the first
transgender Division I basketball player, to 12-year-old Zoe in
Los Angeles, each person discusses challenges encountered daily
as a transgender teen.
Cox, 30, spoke to Reuters about lending her voice to "The T
Word," what needs to change about portrayals of the transgender
community in media and her dream role.
Q: What are some of the biggest misconceptions about the
transgender community in media?
A: The biggest obstacle is that when people assume that trans
people are always and only the gender we were assigned at birth.
Most of the arguments against us having equal rights in the law
and having our gender identities acknowledged has to do with the
point of view that we're not really who we say we are. So we see
that reflected in public policy that won't allow us to change
our name or recognize health insurance or deny us jobs ....
What I wanted to do with this documentary is move the
representation of trans people away from transition and surgery
and body. Certainly our bodies matter but we are more than our
bodies, and I wanted to move away from the focus on what body
parts trans people have and what surgeries we have and haven't
had. I believe those narratives have objectified trans people
and sensationalized their identities.
Q: How do shows like Netflix's "Orange" and Amazon's
"Transparent" help audiences understand transgender people?
A: A lot of people didn't watch ("Orange") knowing
there'd be a trans character, so they found themselves relating
to this trans character as a human being in a human way.
Where our medium is powerful is the way that we can connect with
people as people. So it becomes harder for us to say they don't
deserve rights, that they don't deserve to have the same things
that everybody else has, and that's the wonderful thing that my
representation has connected in a human way. And I see that in
"Transparent" as well.
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Q: What has the biggest challenge been in your career and how
have things changed after "Orange is the New Black"?
A: Pre-"Orange," I played a lot of sex workers. I don't
dehumanize or stigmatize sex work, I believe people who do sex work
are people too, and they deserve to have their stories told in a
human way. The roles that I'd agreed to do that were about sex work
was because I thought they had humanity in those characters.
Since (then), there's one independent film I've done that I can't
talk about yet and I have a recurring role on MTV's "Faking It"
where I play a high school drama teacher, and I've never done that
before. She's very passionate about her work as a drama coach at a
high school and she's really intense and she's really an homage to
all of my fantastic ballet teachers growing up and acting teachers
that I've had over the years.
Q: What do you love about portraying Sophia on "Orange"?
A: I love that she is really complicated, I love her
relationship with her family, her wife and her son Michael. That's
really where we find the heart of Sophia, and I love in Season 2
when she did the anatomy lesson, that was a lot of fun.
Q: Is there a dream role you'd love to play?
A: There's a few things I want to play, but I want to do Lady
Macbeth at some point, probably on stage, although a film version of
Lady Macbeth would be interesting too.
(Editing by Eric Kelsey and Richard Chang)
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