Meet Our Newest Trans TV Character, Dr Casey Parker

While we have seen the number of trans feminine characters increase on our nation's television and movie screens in the last few years, with some of those characters being played by actual trans actors, what we haven't seen is a corresponding increase in trans masculine characters played by actual trans masculine actors .

We've had my Texas homeboy Scott Turner Schofield 's historic recurring role on the CBS soap The Bold and the Beautiful playing Nick in conjunction with the Maya Avant Forrester character played by a cis feminine actress.

We've had Toine Wilkins, a Black trans masculine character on the OWN network show Queen Sugar played by Brian Michael Smith

Now gracing your television screens is Dr. Casey Parker, who made his debut Thursday night on the long running ABC show Grey's Anatomy played by Alex Blue Davis.

"What's cool about the show, the episode and Krista's vision for this character is he's about way more than being trans," Davis said.   "I cried at the table read, it was very moving for me.  I've been waiting for a moment like this on TV my whole life.  I'm so honored I got to say that line on TV because it's a long time coming."

Alex's previous television acting credits include episodes on 2 Broke Girls and NCIS: Los Angeles before getting this role



"TV is opening up to a greater range of roles (for trans characters); laverne played a lawyer on Doubt, and I'm playing a doctor-- both roles haven't really been seen before (for trans characters), Davis says.

"People can see trans folks in a new light: these are people who walk among us and are human beings  who have lives.  They're not defined by being trans."   

That's precisely what we want, be we trans actors or trans folks getting to watch a guy or girl like us on screen.  We want to see characters that are like the peeps we know in Trans World and that are in our our everyday lives..

Congrats Alex for getting that role and also realizing the importance of it, especially in light of the act it's coming during a time when we have to fight a hostile administration and its fundamentalist allies seeking to eviscerate us from public life and discourse. 

'Star' Renewed For A Second Season

While I was more than a little shocked and pissed off to hear that Doubt has been canceled by CBS after only two episodes, I was happy to hear that the other primetime TV drama series with a major trans character in FOX's Star has been renewed for a second season.

While the show is a spinoff of Empire and focuses on an Atlanta based girl group trying to make it in the music business along with all the drama that comes with it in their personal lives, the storyline I have been focused on is the one involving Amiyah Scott's character Cotton and her mother Carlotta, played by Queen Latifah

They have a rocky relationship because of her transition and mom's reluctance to accept that her only child has become her daughter, and each week more of the backstory of both characters is revealed.

There aren't many episodes left in this initial 13 episode run, but looking forward to not only seeing how this first season ends, but picking up on all the storylines in Season 2

Don't Forget This Groundbreaking Black Trans Character

But one thing I would love to see is a fictional trans woman, and especially a transwoman of color play a professional character who happens to be a trans woman more often-TransGriot,  November 16, 2013

As we enter the last two weeks of 2015, the Best Of 2015 articles and 2015 list articles are multiplying.  One of those lists is one that has been compiled by Autostraddle about LGBT television characters.

While Autostraddle has been on point about discussing trans topics including trans media representation, they touched upon some of the trans characters on TV and noted that a separate article specifically focusing on trans characters was forthcoming. in this initial Best of one they continued to miss the trans character that is the most groundbreaking one in Maya Avant on the CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful.


It's groundbreaking for several reasons.  The character played by actress Karla Mosley is a major one on the soap as Forrester Creations lead model, and one of the few African-American lead characters in the soap world.   She is also the first African-American trans character on daytime television.

Yes, the Maya Avant character is at BFD, especially when far too often the television characters who look like me have either far too often been sex workers, drag ones that gets killed in the first ten minutes of the show, or only show up once on the show like 1977's Edie Stokes on The Jeffersons.

Since Maya's reveal as a trans woman in March, we have gotten to meet her sister Nicole, played by Reign Edwards and see that relationship evolve from an adversarial one to one in which Nicole is her loving sister who in one of the current B&B storylines involving the Avant family is acting as the surrogate mother to Rick and Maya's child.

We have met Maya and Nicole's parents Vivienne and Julius Avant. played by veteran actors Anna Maria Horsford and Obba Babatunde, and see her marry the love of her life in Rick Forrester.

We have even met Maya's friend Nick, played by trans man Scott Turner Schofield.  Nick met Maya when she first moved to Los Angeles from Chicago and before the subsequent fame and success for her.  He serves as her adviser, her link to the rest of the trans community, and reminds her that she is beautiful and deserves to be loved as her authentic self..

Schofield is also making history as the first trans man with a recurring role on a daytime television show.

So yes, while Laverne's Sophia Burset on Orange Is The New Black has gotten some well deserved attention and even Emmy nominations, Karla Mosley's Maya Avant character deserves just as much attention and discussion for expanding the way we think about and see Black trans women portrayed on television.

CBS' Bold And The Beautiful Soap Reveals A Trans Feminine Character

African-American trans characters on TV shows are a rare phenomenon. 

The last time a CBS broadcast television series had a serious African-American trans feminine character that wasn't a stereotype, you have to go all the way back to 1977 and Edith Stokes on The Jeffersons 'Just A Friend' episode to find her.

Now that Orange Is the New Black and Transparent have proven it's okay to put trans characters on TV and surprise surprise, if you do them right get ratings and Emmy nominations for the actors that portray them, it seems as though the networks are finally coming to the trans character party late as usual.

Seems as though CBS has decided to continue to break ground when it comes to creating African-American trans characters.   Laverne Cox will debut as the lead character in a legal drama slated to air this fall called Doubt, and now comes word that yesterday the CBS soap opera The Bold and The Beautiful shocked its viewers with an unexpected cliff hanger that involves a trans character.

Actress Karla Mosley has played model Maya Avant on the soap for the last two year.s   Yesterday the bomb was dropped by Nicole Avant (played by Reign Edwards) that Maya was once her brother with the dead name Myron.

“You’re not my sister, Maya. You’re not Maya at all,” said Nicole (Reign Edwards) during an emotional argument. “You’re Myron, my brother.”




That bombshell lit up the Twitterverse as a trending topic for several hours, and now has me scrambling to catch up on some back Bold and The Beautiful episodes, since I've been on a soap hiatus ever since ABC took my beloved All My Children off the air.

“My first reaction was surprise, because 10 or 20 years ago, this is not a story we would be telling, and not in a way that’s truthful and not sensational,” said Mosley in a USA Today interview about her trans feminine character. “My second reaction was, ‘Thank you.’ It’s a gift. It’s a privilege,” she told the newspaper. “It’s a real opportunity to educate our viewers here and all over the world.”

“It is about people respecting other people’s differences and their uniqueness,” said Bradley Bell, executive producer and head writer for B&B in a statement obtained by USA Today. “In the end, we all want to be loved, and in order to love someone else you first have to love yourself,” Bell added. “If you are transgender, gay, straight, it doesn’t matter. It’s about finding love in life. This is a love story.”

And this is going to be a long term B&B storyline according to Mosley that unfolds over a long period of time, and the characters on the show will gradually find out about Maya's past.

"Everyone has a different reaction," she said. "So even if the audience can't necessarily be on board with Maya, or if they have [certain] feelings about Maya's experience now, hopefully they'll be able to see themselves in the reactions of the people around her and we can all sort of process it together."

Until yesterday, Bold and the Beautiful wasn't in my soap opera watching rotation.  Now it is Must See TV as I watch this historic television storyline unfold.

British Soap 'Hollyoaks' To Have Trans Character

The British soap opera Hollyoaks has been broadcast on Channel 4 since October 1995, and is about to start another trans storyline.

Hollyoaks had previously done a trans storyline in which teen Jasmine Costello, portrayed by actress Victoria Atkin, transitioned to living as a young gay man named Jason.from August 2, 2010 to December 1, 2011.

Show regular Modupe Adyeye plays Blessing Chambers, one of the new characters on the long running soap that made her first appearance on February 21.   She is set to reveal next month to Tony Hutchinson (played by Nick Pickard) that she is a trans woman.  

This character inspired by Laverne Cox.is being loosely based on British writer and activist Paris Lees.  

Blessing will reveal that she spent time in a young offenders institution before transitioning and moving to Hollyoaks to start a new life.  At the same time her family, who has not seen her since the transition, hires a private investigator as they start looking for her.  

Adeyeye said: ‘I found researching the character of Blessing really inspiring and I hope that her story of a young trans woman who is loud and feisty and unapologetic proves to be a good role model.

‘I hope that the people who need to be touched by her story will be.’

- See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/hollyoaks-reveals-new-transgender-storyline250414#sthash.a4YxLSv8.9G7SHESV.dpuf

While the show's writers worked with The Gender Trust and All About Trans to ensure a sensitive and realistic portrayal of the upcoming storyline, and Adyeye earnestly wants to do a quality job playing this tarns story, the chatter in the British and international trans community on social media is asking the question why wasn't a trans actress hired to portray a trans person?

I guess we should thank the producers for the small favor of not putting a man in drag in the role, especially since this Hollyoaks trans character is a person of color.  .

Adyeye said in an interview, "I found researching the character of Blessing really inspiring and I hope that her story of a young trans woman who is loud and feisty and unapologetic proves to be a good role model. I hope that the people who need to be touched by her story will be."

The trans community of Great Britain and their trans cousins around the world sure hope so.