This Is What I Have Been Saying…

As we start having trans actresses and actors playing trans parts we need to have them playing non-trans parts.

When will we start seeing transgender actors in non-trans roles?
New York post
By Eric Hegedus
June 22, 2015

Transgender actress Nicole Maines makes her acting debut Tuesday night as a transgender character on USA’s “Royal Pains.”

The 17-year-old joins a growing list of trans actors who are finally landing TV roles that previously might have gone to non-trans performers.

While opportunities are exploding for transgender performers like Laverne Cox (“Orange Is the New Black”), Alexandra Billings (“Transparent”), Jamie Clayton (“Sense8”), Tom Phelan (“The Fosters”) and Candis Cayne (“Elementary”), it’s fair to ask if trans-identifying actors and actresses are being typecast.

“Based on the evidence, and the fact that I can’t think of more than two times that I have seen out transgender actors playing non-transgender roles, then I would say yes,” says Nick Adams, the director of transgender media for the LGBT advocacy group GLAAD.

I don’t think there can even be a debate, when trans actors do get a part it more than likely be a part of a transgender person.

But Billings — who plays Davina, a friend of Jeffrey Tambor’s transitioning character Maura on Amazon’s “Transparent” — says that seeking out cisgender roles is not a priority for her.

“I could play a housewife with three kids, but it will not remove the fact that I am transgender from my performance. I have always embraced and loved it,” says Billings, who has appeared on shows including “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Eli Stone” and “ER.”

I think she is looking at it the wrong way, it is not that “it will not remove the fact that I am transgender from my performance” but rather that being trans is not the focal point of the character. It is that we are more than just “transgender” we are multidimensional, our lives do not revolve being transgender.

When Billings auditioned for a play 30 years ago, she says she didn’t get the part because the casting director said the audience would be focused less on the play and more on her as a trans actress.

Lines are still drawn in the sand, she says, noting that a trans performer “can’t rock the boat” by having a love scene with a straight, opposite-sex actor.

That is true in part. There are some parts that it would “rock the boat” for example if there was a sex scene it could change the nature of the scene, but if the part was of a “a housewife with three kids” why couldn’t a trans person play the part? Say in a cop show the police are interviewing a housewife why couldn’t it be a trans person?

Just like many parts some are gender or race specific while others not, the same is trans for trans actresses and actors.