Laverne Cox Wants to “Rehumanize Everybody”
Even early on in the actress and model Laverne Cox’s career, she knew that she wanted to balance her professional ambitions with improving the lives of other trans people. Her breakout role, as Sophia Burset on “Orange Is the New Black,” which premièred in 2013, led to both greater opportunities and heightened scrutiny. Like the trans pioneer Christine Jorgensen before her, Cox began touring universities (her go-to lecture was titled, naturally, “Ain’t I a Woman,” a playful riff on a declaration often attributed to Sojourner Truth) and working the talk-show circuit; her rise to fame was itself treated as a major media event. In 2014, she appeared on the cover of Time magazine, becoming the first trans woman to do so. The accompanying article, which proclaimed the arrival of “The Transgender Tipping Point,” argued that increased visibility had brought about unprecedented acceptance. Twelve years later, it’s impossible not to look back at that more hopeful time with a sense of grim irony.
At first, it seemed the optimists might be vindicated. In 2017, Cox became the first trans woman to be a series regular on broadcast television, when she played the crusading defense attorney Cameron in the CBS legal drama “Doubt.” She went on to appear in such projects as “Disclosure,” an acclaimed documentary about trans representation onscreen; Shonda Rhimes’s hit Netflix series “Inventing Anna”; and “Clean Slate,” an Amazon Prime sitcom produced by Norman Lear and inspired by Cox’s own life. She’s won an Emmy and showed up in a Taylor Swift music video. But she has not received the same kinds of Oscar-bait roles as her cis counterparts. Both “Doubt” and “Clean Slate” were cancelled after only one season. And even as the offers have dried up amid a growing anti-trans backlash, Cox’s personal life and family history remain tabloid fodder. In her new memoir, “Transcendent,” she reflects on her career thus far and the long-standing effects of her painful childhood on her love life. We discussed her experience coming up as a club kid in nineties New York, her friendship with bell hooks, and her hopes and fears for the trans community today. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I saw you speak many, many years ago when you came to Indiana University. It was right after I’d gone through conversion therapy. So I’m curious about your own experience with that.
You had a conversion-therapy experience! I mean, mine was in 1980. They were therapeutic sessions, and after the third session, they wanted to inject me with testosterone. Luckily, my mother didn’t allow that to happen. Around 1999 or 2000, I was in a support group at the Center here in New York and met a trans woman in a support group who had been pumped with testosterone when she was twelve years old, and it made her transition so much harder.
So you only went three times?
When they proposed the testosterone injections, my mother thought that was crazy. I was, like, eight, nine years old. She just took me out, thank God. So that was that. But with that whole incident, that was a shift for me, from being free to policing myself and watching and monitoring myself so that I wouldn’t be too femme. I mean, I didn’t do a very good job, but it became a turning point for a new level of self-hatred, a new level of feeling misunderstood; of feeling like a burden to my mother. I always felt like a burden to her. She was working four jobs and trying to make ends meet. I felt horrible. I didn’t want to be a problem to my mother. I just wanted her to love me. I didn’t even realize that fully until I started writing the book. I was talking to my co-writer about the incident and she was asking me questions, and the phrase “I didn't know how to tell my mother I was a girl” came to me, and I just started crying. I didn’t know how to tell her I was a girl because I knew she wouldn’t believe me.
It seems like one of the things that got you through that time was your attention to glamour and fashion.
I didn’t start dressing myself till middle school, and it wasn’t glamour. I was living at home, so it wasn’t gender nonconformity. It wasn’t until I got to high school and I was at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and away from my mother that I started wearing girls’ and women’s clothes for the first time. Glamour to me, though, was Iman. I didn’t know who she was on the cover of Jet magazine—and this beautiful elegance. Glamour was Scarlett O’Hara. Glamour was Diahann Carroll as Dominique Devereaux on “Dynasty.” I was obsessed with Madonna. I had posters of her everywhere. So Madonna began to embody a certain kind of glamour for me. I loved her Old Hollywood references. Janet Jackson was glamour for me.
My relationship to glamour now is that I get to live these fantasies of being in couture pieces, and I collect vintage. It’s beauty. It’s art. I love a good fashion exhibit. I love fashion history—and, for me, glamour is where fashion meets art. Just getting to do these photo shoots. In red-carpet images, the lighting’s up and really bad, and they don’t get the right angles, but it’s this fantasy.
Do you have a favorite designer?
Thierry Mugler, of course. In my holy trinity of designers, Mugler is at the top, then John Galliano and Alexander McQueen. Sarah Burton was wonderful when she was at McQueen, but lifetime McQueen, the work he designed himself—those are my tops. I became obsessed with Mugler in 1992, when I saw the “Too Funky” music video. I didn’t know who he was! I remember getting this little book—is it here? Yes. [She pulls out “Fashion Fetish Fantasy.”] I got this little book from Barnes & Noble.
It was really the cut of the suits and the silhouette. He’s known for this hourglass silhouette, and I think because I’m trans and I have very broad shoulders . . . I mean, he and Montana defined the eighties with these big, broad shoulders with these teeny-tiny waists. That silhouette was achieved because he started working with the legendary corset-maker Mr. Pearl, until 1992. So girl, don’t get me started on Mugler.
In your book, you’re very open about money and very transparent about the pay you received for “Orange Is the New Black” and “Doubt.” You also recently spoke with Harron Walker in The Cut, and you talked a little bit about how the opportunities you used to get for speaking gigs have been declining. Tell me about your decision to be transparent about pay.
Well, at the height of the MeToo movement, a lot of women started talking about pay, and it became clear that we need to talk about money so that we know what other people are making, what we are worth, and what we should be asking for. I think, too, I talk about money because, if I am losing opportunities at the level that I’m at, then what about the working-class trans person who’s not famous and who doesn’t have the following and the platform that I have? I think that is just important to mention. It exposes that a lot of the corporate “rainbow capitalism” was conditional. We always knew it was. I don’t think anyone was deluded that these corporations really deeply cared about us. It’s really the system. Their fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders. That’s the gig.
What was your time as a club kid like? It’s definitely a part of the book, but I feel like you say “I have so many stories” and move on. Well, tell me some!
There’s so many things that got cut! It was magical. My first restaurant job was at Stingy Lulu’s, which is now a Starbucks on St. Mark’s and Avenue A. I worked there a couple of nights a week. I loved working there Monday nights because Blacklist Performance Cult was performing at Pyramid Club at the time. It was a very underground, very avant-garde performance troupe that was started by Anohni. Her voice has always been pure emotion.
Limelight, at the time, had several rooms, and there was always a line around the corner to get in. One of the best things is that if you were one of the kids, you didn’t have to wait. I went right up to Kenny, who was the main door person, and he would always let me in. I was also in college, and I didn’t do drugs. I had to study, so I didn’t go out as much as some of the other kids did. But I was out enough that people knew me, and I never had to wait to get into clubs.
All the kids did runway back then. They would do runway walks, they would vogue, we would dance. And with my ballet training—I started studying [Martha] Graham, and we would join in, and it was fucking fabulous.
That’s incredible.
I never officially met Michael Alig [the club promoter convicted of killing the club kid Andre (Angel) Menendez, in 1997]. I was in the room with him several times, but I never met him. I did meet Angel. When I first moved to New York, people would always ask me where the drugs were. I’m, like, Why are you asking me? But I think because I was gender-nonconforming, I did not look like a cop. So people just assumed. To be clear, I’ve never done a drug in my life. I don’t judge—people need to do what they need to do. I actually think we need to decriminalize marijuana. But for me, my sperm donor was a drug addict and drug dealer and went to jail for that. But people would always ask me about drugs. I learned that Angel was the guy. So, I would direct people to Angel. I remember being backstage at Queen—there was a little stage—and just chatting with Angel. He was very soft-spoken and sweet. And then you hear about him being murdered. It’s just crazy.
There was just so much culture that was happening in night clubs at the time, and night clubs were very integrated: straight, gay, trans, everybody sort of partied together. And it wasn’t a party if the kids weren’t there. It was not a hip, cool party unless you had club kids. That was incredible.
In the early chapters of your book, you talk a lot about your mom and your relationship with your brother, Lamar, who’s also an artist. Have they read the book yet?
My mother has not read it. My brother has not read it, but my brother—I love him so much. He’s so himself. Because we were in the legal process, and they basically wanted him to sign off on how he’s portrayed in the book. He’s, like, “Well, I can’t sign off until I know every mention of me in the book.” So we combed through and found every mention of him in the book, and he went through and approved things and said, “No, you need to take this out and take this out.” And it was fabulous. Of course, everything he wanted out is out. With my mom, it’s trickier, because I needed to tell the truth. I think when I got a book deal in 2014 or so, I was not ready.
A lot of the truth about what happened with my mother and what happened with the, what I would call abuse—the sense of feeling unwanted and unlovable—I wasn’t ready. I was not raised to disrespect my mother or speak ill of my mother, and I try not to. I just try to say what happened. There was an earlier version where apparently my mother came across sort of monstrously, and we tried to soften that, but I needed people to understand what my life was like.
There were years when I was mad at my mother. I’ve forgiven my mother. She’s dealing with complex traumas that have not been processed. I always find it hilarious that, years after I transitioned, my mother revealed that she went to therapy for a few years to deal with my transition. I was, like, girl, my transition is the least of your problems. You should be in therapy for your childhood. You had a horrible daddy! So, I meet her where she is. I understand she did the best she could, and it turned out pretty well.
Was it hard when you went back to Mobile to film “Clean Slate”? So much of that show also seems to reflect some of the themes in the book.
We actually started in Savannah because of tax credits, but the way they designed George’s house felt so much like my mom’s house, and the church where we shot felt so much like Bethel. I was triggered every day during that shoot. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done because it was so personal. I think George Wallace [the actor who plays the father character in “Clean Slate”] was really my mother, because I didn’t grow up with a father. He was really my mother, the way my mother treated me. But George did his version of it and made it comedic. But I was so blessed that I got to work with my acting coach every day, because it was so raw. What we do as actors is truthfully acting out imaginary circumstances, so the whole conceit is, What if I didn’t become famous and I moved back to Mobile, Alabama? That would be horrible for me. I would never move back to Mobile. There’s no way. And it’s gotten better—I’ve had moments. There was one trip, maybe two years ago, I went back and I wasn’t triggered for the first time. Every time I go back, it’s the ghost of childhood trauma.
Let’s talk about the trans tipping point.
What do you want to know?
Well, I guess I’m curious how you conceptualize that moment now, and your role in “Orange Is the New Black,” and the expectations that were put on you during that time.
What I love about just reflecting on it now is how smart we trans people are and how so many trans folks spoke critically of that moment in ways that I didn’t feel disparaged me but were critical of the premise of the whole thing. That moment inspired Sam Feder to start the beginnings of “Disclosure.” I didn’t know Sam at the time, but when he saw that moment, he knew, inevitably, that when there’s visibility for a marginalized group, there’s invariably backlash. He saw it coming in 2014.
For me, there was also a personal piece. It was my first big magazine cover. It was Time magazine. It felt prestigious. The announcement happened on my birthday, and it was the day after the magazine came out that I found out I got a Critics’ Choice nomination for my work on the first season of “Orange Is the New Black.” I was the first openly trans person to get a Critics’ Choice nomination. So I planned a party because it was my birthday—and because, when we did the interview, it was a cover try. So, [the magazine told me that] “If a big event happens, you could be bumped from the cover.” Maya Angelou actually died that week, so I was convinced I was going to be bumped from the cover, but they didn’t bump me.
In addition to doing my work on “Orange,” I was trying to make as much money as possible—because I was in student-loan debt, I was in rent arrears, I was in credit-card debt, I had no savings, I had no retirement account, all that stuff. So I was trying to make as much money as possible, but I was also trying to change the conversation about trans people in the media. Honestly, I would not have been able to have the career that I have been able to have if we hadn’t changed the conversation, because people weren’t going to be able to see me as a human being. The character of Sophia helped. Having this humanized portrayal of a trans woman, played by a trans woman, helped for sure. The conversations that happened around that weren’t always great. I think the Katie Couric interview was the turning point of my career.
I didn’t realize until reading your book that there was a second interview with Katie Couric. She famously asked a lot of invasive questions about surgery and your body parts during her first on-air chat with you and Carmen Carrera, in 2014, but then she brought you back on. That’s a really powerful moment that’s hard to imagine happening now.
A testament to Katie Couric and her commitment to not being right but getting it right. She’s now become this fierce advocate for our community.
Do you feel hopeful now?
Hope isn’t the word. I feel that this is a moment where we have to make some really important decisions about who we are, who we want to be, and how we’re going to proceed. I’ve been saying when history looks back at me, I want to be a Christian Dior, not a Coco Chanel. It’s that serious. We’re in a fascist moment with this crazy President who wants to be a dictator, who’s just thrown every law out the window. In Nazi Germany, trans people were some of the first people who were attacked, and history is repeating. Books haven’t been burned, but every year has been getting worse on the state level, and we have the federal government ramping up with executive orders. It’s nuts, and they just keep finding new things to do to disenfranchise trans people in order to delegitimize our identities. It’s not even about hope. We have to take action right now. We have to have the courage to tell the truth. And that’s part of what my job is. I think rhetorically we need to rehumanize trans people and rehumanize everybody.
Do you think that their goal in dehumanization is eradication?
Yes, absolutely. I mean, their prisoners are being detransitioned in prison, right? This is a project that they want. They’ve introduced a bill banning gender-affirming care nationally. I believe that is the goal. I absolutely believe that it’s a goal that they want to detransition all of us or put us in camps and force us to be detransitioned.
On a different note, I am a huge bell hooks fan, and I remember that you quoted her during your talk at I.U. in 2014. Of course, you also had this fascinating, intense, and very public conversation at CUNY. The two of you became friends, and you sort of talk about her as a surrogate mother. What have you taken away from her legacy?
Her courage. Her courage to speak the truth, even when it was difficult—the courage of her convictions. There’s a beautiful talk called “Breaking Bread,” which is taken from a talk between her and Cornell West from the mid-nineties. It was right after the Million Man March, and she had lots of problems with the Million Man March. She starts off the conversation saying, “I haven’t seen you in a while, Cornell, and I love you. And I don’t want to start saying, ‘I disagree with you,’ but I disagree with you on this.” Even the day I interviewed Cornell West for my podcast, I called bell the morning of the interview and I said, “I’m interviewing Cornell today. Do you want me to ask him anything or say anything to him?” [Laughs.] I love this woman. This woman is about that life. She said, “I still think he hasn’t fully grappled with patriarchy and his internalized patriarchy.” So I asked him about that.
It’s on Spotify. I tell him what she said—but she also said, “I love him even though he doesn’t love me.” They’re very playful with each other. So I told Brother West all that and he danced around. I love him. That Presidential run was embarrassing, and he tarnished his legacy with that mess.
For me, hooks’s legacy is that relentless pursuit of liberation justice. She’s deeply interested in our wellness as Black people, deeply invested in us being psychologically, emotionally well. She writes brilliantly about the psychological and emotional effects of white supremacy and what she would call imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. I take with me the depth of the scholarship. I think her concept of the oppositional gaze and Black female spectatorship that she writes about in “Black Looks,” which was the first bell hooks book I read, remains prescient. It remains a crucial addition to film criticism, particularly feminist film criticism. What was the first book you read, do you remember?
The first two I read were “Teaching to Transgress” and “Reel to Real.” The latter book has something that I cite almost daily, which is her essay on Quentin Tarantino, where she says cynicism is not liberatory.
Just the analysis, the scholarship. She read a book a day. This woman was serious. She was just brilliant. I love my mother, but my mother still doesn’t fully see me and she doesn’t have the capacity to—and that’s O.K. I love her anyway. But bell hooks saw me. Even before I met her, I felt her words. When I read “Black Looks,” my molecules shifted.
You have a whole chapter on a man you call Giuseppe, a conservative cop you dated for four years. I know there was a lot of conversation online after you revealed that relationship. How was writing that chapter and being so vulnerable about him?
I did a solo show last year, and I mentioned the relationship in a very tone-deaf way randomly on an Instagram Live, and the backlash was swift and brutal from all corners of the internet. I lost followers. Some people still don’t fuck with me because I dated Giuseppe, and that’s fine. But where I’m at now with that, with the fans who felt betrayed, who felt I’m not who I say I am . . . I’m not Nikki Minaj. I didn’t vote for that motherfucker, ever. Yes, my ex is a triple Trumper. I voted for Kamala. I have never advocated for any Republican policy. I think sometimes people think that if you date someone who has different political beliefs, then you adopt those political beliefs. They don’t know me. Maybe some women do. I wonder, if I were a man, if it would be the same because I dated someone. If I were a leftist man dating a Republican woman, would people assume that I had the same beliefs of my partner?
I mean, the way I justified the cop thing to myself, I was, like, we all work for corrupt institutions. We live in capitalism. We all have to navigate corrupt institutions. The police are a corrupt institution. I’ve worked for several multinational corporations. But my editor was, like, “People aren’t going to really get that.” So we took that out of the book. That’s part of how I was rationalizing it [when we were dating]. I was, like, “You can be in an institution but not of it.” Then I realized that you cannot be a cop and not be of an institution. I had to love myself more than I loved him. And I do. I didn’t betray myself, and that’s progress. ♦