Netflix Star Comes out as Transgender Woman

Netflix Star Comes out as Transgender Woman,The 'Glamorous' star opened up about her journey as a transgender woman in a personal essay for 'TIME' magazine.

Netflix Star Comes out as Transgender Woman

Former YouTube creator and Glamorous star Miss Benny has come out as transgender. The actress, who stars as Marco Mejia opposite Kim Cattrall in the new Netflix series and who wrote on Twitter that she uses she/her pronouns, revealed in a personal essay for TIME magazine that she has been “privately living” as a transgender woman “for the last few years.”

“The gap is quickly closing between now and June 22: the day that my television series Glamorous will come out on Netflix,” Miss Benny wrote in the June-published essay. “And along with it, I too will come out as the transgender woman I’ve been privately living as for the last few years. I’m a proud person, but admittedly it’s still a bit daunting to say those words publicly.”

thank u @TIME for letting me write about my transition for the first time. 🦋 my pronouns are she/her. i am overwhelmed with hard-earned joy. happy pride ♥︎https://t.co/uVmYdhYLbg pic.twitter.com/1jpbGknphE

— miss benny (@MissBenny) June 26, 2023

The actress, who previously appeared on Fuller House, American Horror Stories, and Love, Victor, wrote that she “grew up in a religious Texas household where queerness was totally not the vibe” and was homeschooled so as to not “tamper with the Christian faith my parents raised me in.” Miss Benny said that “by 8 years old, I was praying every night to wake up and somehow be like my sisters. In the morning I would wake up in the same body, and cry. Over time I became highly aware of how unwelcome LGBT topics would be in my hometown. And so I kept my head down and looked for an immediate escape.”

Miss Benny moved to Los Angeles at 14 to “establish my own identity, and, hopefully, make a career as an actor,” but she was met with rejection because it “wasn’t time for someone like me.” She eventually landed the role of non-binary makeup artist Marco Mejia on Glamorous. By the time the series was officially picked up, the actress “privately transitioned in my day-to-day life. It felt as if I had lived with a stuffy nose my whole life and then suddenly my breathing airways opened, and I discovered everybody else has been breathing freely the whole time.” She ultimately met with creator Jordan Nardino and pitched changing her character’s story to fit her identity.

“It was really important that Marco’s trans-ness was not the plot of the show,” she wrote. “It’s not a ‘twist’ to surprise the audience. Instead, we get to watch a young queer person experiencing first love and heartbreak, career success and failure, and everything else that comes with being a young adult… while also discovering their identity in the background of life. Because being transgender is not something you do, it’s who you are.”

Although the actress said she was initially hesitant about coming out on such a large platform during the current “the political space,” she said she is “reminded that this fear is exactly why I wanted to include my transition in the show. I know that when I was a terrified queer kid in Texas, it was the queer joy I found in droplets online that guided me to my happiness. And if someone like me is out there feeling the weight of being othered, I want them to have a place they can see someone like us thrive and be celebrated.”

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