A TV Show With A Trans Actress

A sitcom in England is featuring a trans actress,

BBC starts filming sitcom starring transgender actor
Boy Meets Girl, to be shown on BBC2 later this year, will follow story of 40-year-old Judy’s relationship with Leo, 26
The Guardian
By Hannah Ellis-Petersen
4 February 2015

The BBC has begun filming a groundbreaking sitcom that will be the first to star a transgender actor. Boy Meets Girl was commissioned by the BBC after the script, by Elliott Kerrigan, won the Trans Comedy Award in 2013, and will be the first BBC comedy to feature transgender issues prominently, as it follows the developing relationship between 26-year-old Leo and 40-year-old Judy, who is a transgender woman.

Judy is to be played by actor and stand-up comedian Rebecca Root, who underwent transition surgery in 2005. While it is still rare to see trans actors playing trans characters on British screens, Root follows in the footsteps of comedian Bethany Black, the first trans woman to play a recurring trans character on TV, Helen in Russell T Davies’s Channel 4 comedies Banana and Cucumber.

It was no accident that a trans woman is playing the part of a trans woman,

Speaking about Root’s casting, Clarke-Jervoise said: “When we started out, we always knew we had to get a trans actress – I don’t think we auditioned anyone who wasn’t trans for the role. It just didn’t feel right. It was a no-brainer, really. We auditioned a lot of people, but when we saw Rebecca she had such a lovely, natural warmth to her, and that’s what we really wanted. And Rebecca has been incredibly helpful in giving us some background of her story, so a lot of it based on truth, which is really great.”

You got that? They purposely went out and found a trans actress. They didn’t look at cisgender actors to play a trans woman but the made an effort to go out and find a trans woman. Also notice what the executive producer Sophie Clarke-Jervoise said, “And Rebecca has been incredibly helpful in giving us some background of her story, so a lot of it based on truth, which is really great.”

There are some great trans actresses and actors out there that only need a chance to show their stuff and even though actors like Jeffrey Tambor give fantastic performances there are trans actresses and actors who might have given great performances also if they were given a chance.