Laverne Cox

I never knew. Did you get that I was going to be doing?

“On the Sunday story, an exclusive two-part series on the global scam industry,”

from the point of view of the scammers themselves. Listen out to the Sunday story from up first on the MPR app. You met her the way most of the world did. A transgender woman in prison, doing hair, and fighting for her right to gender-affirming care, and the Netflix series, Orange is the new black.

Listen, Doc, I need my dosage. I've given five years, $80,000 in my freedom for this. I'm finally home supposed to be. Do you understand? I can't go back. I'd like to help you. Unfortunately, you have elevated levels of AST and ALT, which could mean liver damage. That can mean anything. We're going to take you off your hormones entirely. Until we can schedule an ultrasound,

get a clean read. But that could take months. I can offer you an antidepressant. That's Leverne Cox is so fear-verset in 2014. The role made her the first openly transgender person nominated for a prime time Emmy in an acting category, and put her on the cover of time magazine next to the words "The transgender tipping point." For decade now, she's been one of the most visible trans women in America. But the woman on that magazine cover was carrying

things she'd never told anyone, not even her therapist. She's written a new memoir,

titled Transcendent, and it arrives at a moment when her right to simply exist is being debated in state houses across the country. But the book makes clear that for Cox, none of this is new. Long before she had the words for it, she was bullied for who she was. Her very existence as she writes was an affront to the order of things. And she's been fighting for the right to simply be her entire life. Leverne Cox, welcome to Fresh Air. It's such an honor to have you. Thank you

so much for having me. I have not heard. It's rare that I just hear the clip from Orange and it's been so long and I got it brings back memories. And it's really what's interesting is even for actors out there. Often when I watch a scene that I've done, it's hard for me to have distance. I immediately am in the character again, and I'm in the emotion of the scene. And so I'm immediately feeling what I was feeling when we shot this, this is 2012 that we shot it. So it was funny.

I was just like, "Yeah, did you laugh? What did you make you laugh?" No, with the end, when I'm in writing a soap Fantastic, I maybe I can offer you an antidepressant, it's hilarious.

Well, Orange is a new black. It was revolutionary for the time. And your character, I was very

surprised to learn from the book that you weren't a regular reoccurring character. You were guest star.

“Yes, and I mean, that's really a contractual thing. So I was in, I think, I don't remember how”

me episodes I was in the first season, but I remember it was a day-to-day thing. I didn't have like a contract the first season. I was literally a day-player guest star, a day-player, but I was kind of making day-player rates. I wasn't making like guest star rates. The second season I was, my salary was like a guest star rate and I had, like, I think, a seven episode guarantee in the end of season. Me for nine episodes. So I was there a lot, and they wrote generously for me.

I think because that my backstory episode came, it was the third episode of the show that people thought. I felt like you were a cast member. Yes. Yeah. I think people think because so much of the work that you have done feel so true to life, it's so much of that show might be your life, and I think it's part of what makes this book really eye-opening because we're learning things about you that we did it know. I want to start with the beginning of your book, because your eight

years old, you decide to start at a moment when you're eight years old. You are at a park near your family's apartment in Mobile, Alabama. You're doing your kid thing and just playing out and there are these boys that come up to you, the caraway boys, and they begin teasing you and then it gets violent. Can I have you pick up the story from there? During one of these teasing sessions,

“while you talk like that, one of the caraway boys shoved me. I don't even remember which one.”

They were interchangeably menacing figures. This time, I couldn't keep my balance and found myself

at them, I saw the switch flip in their eyes. I saw that flicker of threat. The way there are

“stances shifted into those of aggression that made the hairs on my arm stand on end.”

They were disgusted by me. I was no longer a friend, up here. Someone to play with. I was an easy target. I was praying. Their fist landed in unison on my face, my chest. You see this f***? Look at this sissy, like a girl. One of them sneered. Half laughing and glee, as they punched me. Their voices blended into one. As they pelted me. Irling every name they could think of, and my instinct.

From as far back as the days of daycare bullying took over, rolling me onto my side and into a ball. The words rang in my ears. Those from the past intermingling with those of the careway

boys. I'd heard these words before. At first, I'd not know what they meant,

but now, after years of it, I recognize them. Words that meant I was different from the other kids. A girl when I should have acted like a boy. I love her, and thank you for reading that passage. You go on to say that you curl up in a ball and it doesn't stop. They get energized. And finally, you're able to make it home and you get into your apartment and your mom sees you. And she doesn't say what happened to you. She immediately says, you let them beat you up like this.

What did you do to make them do this to you? Why did you want to start the book off

“with that particular story? I don't know. It was my life. I mean, I think that was like”

the physical violence of the other children that I was persistent throughout my childhood. And then, um, my mother finding out, and instead of having an impulse to protect me or care for me, or ask if I was okay, she made it my fault. And it just, in a way, it sort of epitomizes that kind of feeling of not feeling protected, not feeling safe. You're sort of encapsulates a lot of childhood. I'm, you know, reading that again, I have to say, it's still difficult to read.

It's still difficult to, um, yeah. You grew up inside of people's reactions to you, and a feminine child, a gender non-conforming teenager, a trans woman, and everything that you, you received, it was like race, gender, and

class converging into one person. What really struck me from that very first story throughout the

entire book is, um, the shame and hatred that people carried, they took it out on you, and it even happened in your home. Mm-hmm. Yes. Whew. I'm just trying to gather my resilience. And like, I guess I'm like having, and it's like, there's like reading that. I'm just like, I'm emotional. I'm angry. It's like, it's hard to read that. Um, and obviously, I lived it, but it's hard to read about it again. Um, I guess it understand as an adult. Um, like, I'm angry at the boys. I'm angry at my mother.

“I'm, I want to protect that little child. Um, I'm just so, um, I'm so angry, and I think like, um,”

yeah, I don't know if I can, I can be able to read Xers in this book again. We'll see. I'm just, I'm so pissed. Um, I'm so angry, and I'm so hurt, and I'm so, um, what are the words, what, the anger comes from you having to experience it? And it's, um, there's also like the anger of,

anger of knowing that, um, in states that have, um, passed, um, anti-trans laws that the bullying,

“percentage of bullying is like skyrocketed in those states. You're a matter of story.”

Great. A lot of stories, but that's actually, those are statistics. Like there's the anecdotes, but those are the stats from the Trevor Project. Um, because like, to manufacture the consent to pass, um, anti-trans laws that would ban gender-forming care for kids and, and the, all the minutes of trans girls and sports, all like two of them. Um, there's the, the rhetorical piece that happens in the media, that is dehumanizing and stigmatizing trans people, and it creates a

permission structure. If like your, you know, governor and your state legislators are doing,

if you're, um, you know, your teachers and, you know, pundits on TV are doing it, then like,

of course, kids are involved and to do it. And that makes me so angry. Um, and, you know, it's like, the, the sadness is like, you know, that it's just the loneliness and I couldn't process it fully as a child. And I don't know. It just really sucked. Um, this was so, it was torture to write this. And the reason I wrote it is to, um, to tell the truth, I'm like, I just don't think it's, it makes any sense to write a book and like to clean stuff up and to

like not be honest and not be raw, but it's just like, wow. What made you decide to write it now, especially because I know you probably had books coming to you, wanting you to write books

at the time when you were on oranges, the new black, or you're on the cover of time, magazine,

when magazines are fighting to have you on the cover, what, what made you decide to do it now? Yeah, um, um, I don't know. I have an impulse to want to apologize, but I'm not going to do that. Um, from my emotion right now. Um, and the opportunity came along and when it did, I thought that I, that I was, had done enough therapy that I could get through it. I thought that the memories that were buried with stay buried. And I, um, came up with this device, um, of, um,

when I, when I would disassociate as a kid when dramatic things would happen, I would, um, pretend I was dersel from, um, saw the goal, the lead, saw the goal dancer, on the, there was a TV show in the 80s called Salt Lake, 70s and 80s called Salt Lake,

“Gold, they would count down the, our listeners will remember that.”

Um, you say, like, I mean, I don't, I mean, there's so many, you know, totally, people who are way younger than me who have no idea. Yeah. Um, so I would go to these other places and I thought that I could use that device in writing the book to sort of protect myself. And then we, I found we sort of use that device not as much as I wanted to. And then I found that like memories I thought were buried, came back, um, and it was just, it was harrowing. But so I thought I could handle

it and it just felt, it felt like the right time. I don't know why. I'm, I'm welcoming the new place with my mother. It just felt like the time to do it. And it did come like a couple of years ago. And it was, I couldn't go right after 2023. I was, it was, it became very clear to me that

“we, that trans people lost the culture. And that, I think, had the country, it banned gender”

for me here beyond people. I knew, um, and, and, um, layman's parlance that we were screwed as trans people. I knew this was the beginning of a disaster in terms of policy, in terms of stigma scapegoating and the dehumanization was so, um, clear to me. And so I think I also thought, like maybe one more human story out there can help. I want to go back to your home and your mom and your decision to write all of this down because the majority of the book takes place in your

childhood. Tell me about Mobile Alabama and that home that you grew up in. How would you describe it? Mobile, it's interesting. I go back now and I find it quaint and way too hot in the summer. But like, the azaleas, there's lots of beautiful things about it and there are all these anti-bellum homes that still exist on their government street and there's something quaint about parts of it. And there's just a lot of trauma though, literally on the streets, if you're going to knit

over neighborhood where, um, where my mom still lives, there's trauma on those streets for me. Is that a part of town? What part of town is that? We would call it down the bay, down the um, and it's where most of the black people in Mobile live and, um, yeah, and it's downtown,

Marigar Parade, Marigar started in Mobile in this country, not in New Orleans, um, it's some people might think, and so the Marigar Parades are, um, happened downtown, and this, I love, I love it.

“And you grew up with your mother and your twin brother?”

And my twin brother, yes. Um, yeah, Mobile though, when I was growing up there, I was just, I just, I needed to get out. It was awful. Um, it felt repressive and I just knew I needed to be, the second I discovered there was New York. I knew I had to be there. And so most of my childhood I was in Mobile, but I was in my imagination. I was in New York, or I was on a TV screen, or I was on a movie screen or I was on a Broadway stage. Um, yeah, it's interesting. The book

is called Transcendent, and in a way, it sounds like, dissociating was your way to transcend as a child.

What were some of the ways that you would try to, to transcend? I always had, it was always music in

my head, which is such a wonderful gift. And so I just, from the second I was walking, I was dancing, and I was dancing, I danced everywhere. And it just kind of like, it just took me away. It took me away

“from like, so it was because for me, when I danced, it was music, but then there was like a character.”

There was a person that I could play. Um, so I was like, in a character, and then I was, it would be a new setting. And so like, all the times this movie would be at the supermarket in the grocery store, I just love pushing the grocery cart and then dancing with the grocery cart as if it was like a partner. Did you have headphones on? Walkman? No darling, the music groove is in the heart. A walkman. This is like, I mean, I, you know, I was five years old. It would have been 1972,

1977, the walkman's even exist. We couldn't afford one if it did. The music was in my head, and the groove was in the heart. And actually, in the supermarket, they would play music. And I remember loving TV show themes. I would learn the worst of TV show themes, and like,

sing along and dance to them. So there was always like a song, and a rhythm, and then a character,

and, and movement. And it was, um, it was so amazing that I got to do, that I had that, that I could go there. And then when I discovered that you could study dance. So I want to take dance classes. When I take dance classes, I five years old. And, um, and I won't give away that moment from the book. So, um, humorous moment about that. But finally, in third grade, I got to start studying

“dance, and that really, um, that was the best thing ever for me. This disassociation, this,”

going to all of these different places. I mean, this would happen to you everywhere at home, at school. And there's a particular moment in school where you've got your little fan, and you're in your classroom. And, um, something happens that kind of stays with you for the rest of your life. Yeah. That was certainly a moment. So we had gone to six flags in a church trip, and I had some spending money. And, um, bought a handheld fan at the gift shop at six flags.

And, as the women in church with fan themselves and his Scarlet or Hera,

would fan herself at St. Gallen with the wind. On television, it seemed like it was always on

in Alabama. Go figure. Um, and I was having a Scarlet or Hera moment, fanning myself, um, in beginning of the day and third grade. And my third grade teacher, Miss Ridge Wang, says, you, um, they are coming here and bringing that thing with you and she marches me down the hall to the fourth grade teacher. And, tells me to show her what I was doing with my fan. And, so I proceed to fan myself the way I had in class. And, she tells me to stop and I weighed and she had conferences

with that teacher and then she marches me down the hall to the fifth grade teacher. And, um, tells me to do it again. And I was like, well, maybe I didn't do it. You know, it's maybe I didn't fully commit it. So I committed more and really, really dropped into Scarlet. And then, um, later that day, my mother, um, comes in and, and, and, and told tells me, she got in a call from the school from Miss Ridge Way and Miss Ridge Way said that, um, that I would end up in New Orleans wearing a dress

if we didn't get me into therapy right away. And to stand now is what, um, some people would refer to as conversion therapy, I guess there's different kinds, but at the time, um, after three sessions with the therapist, um, the, um, solution or the, um, you know, the thing that they suggested what we do was to inject me with testosterone and that the idea was that that was supposed to make me more masculine and I would not, that there was a hormone issue. This was, this would have been 1980,

going through pre relays. So they were suggesting injecting an eight, nine year old with testosterone,

“which sounds insane to me, um, my mother, thank God to that note of that. And so it was, I just felt”

relief that that didn't happen to me. Our guest today is actor and transgender activist, Lover and Cox. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tony Mosley and this is fresh air. This is our glass. On this American life, when then we like, it's a good mystery. Sometimes about really big things. But most times, the little mysteries are the best. Our lost and found

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It's a fun read. It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, and exclusive. Subscribe at whuye.org/freshair, and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. I'm thinking about that moment when your mother took you to this conversion therapy, and you're right so compassionately about your mom, but you also are unspiring in the way that she treated you as a child. Typically, I don't encounter memoirists who write this way unless they

are a strange from their mother, where their mother is dead, and that's neither case for you. No. I'm sorry I'm laughing because it's like it's crazy. She hasn't read the book yet.

“How would you describe the kind of mother your mother was to you?”

How would I describe it? That's an interesting thing because it was their way I purchased the book because I was like this is what happened, and this is how when we feel. But characterizing how my mother was to me. My mother was a disciplinarian. She constantly corrected my grandma, which in my brother's grandma, which I'm insanely grateful for now, insanely grateful for. My biggest pet peeve is when people say less when they mean fewer. Anyway, like it's just it's

still great. So my mother was um she was critical of other parents, and overly concerned about how

she appeared to the world. That was almost like a driving force to her, her not being embarrassed and her being people not talking badly about her. And in small towns, people talk quite a bit. And so you that teacher calling to say that you were fanning in the classroom and this is a problem. I mean that became a problem for her. She made it about her. She made it about what people were saying about her, and that people were talking about her, and that I was a bad reflection

of her, and then the therapy thing too was like who's gonna pay for it isn't you know, like there's no money. Like because it was so I was all of a sudden a problem. And I understood it being a big problem for me, but then even talking to my brother about it and him just sort of watching all of that happen. There was sort of a horror for him. You know, I've tried not to speak

“for him in this book, but like just I think he won't mind me saying this, because he's told me”

watching all of this policing of my gender expression and this like attention that I was getting that wasn't positive or affirming like the message that was sent to him is that like I can't be anything like that. I have to like suppress the thing anything that might evoke that kind of

we who are not twins have this idea of what twins are like. The closeness that you feel,

“that you know it's a fiction. I mean there's a closeness now. It's healthier now than it's”

ever been with my brother. But I think the dynamic we were not a touchy-feely family. We weren't a family that said I love you. So like my brother and I so we didn't do that. Like we didn't like that wasn't our relationship. But what we did, we bonded most around music, art. I there were papyrids when I when I would be in dance class and he would come and watch and critique and he would give me his notes. And you know, and now it's like we talk a lot of politics. But then we also

talk a lot of art. Your brother actually was in ornges the new black. Was that your idea? Was that his idea? How did that come about? Technically it was mine, I guess. When it was determined that I wasn't put enough to play my character free transition. And I think what's interesting about that now is

“um, they're, I think, Jodi, I think, though, the writers. Jodi Foster, who was a guest director?”

Yes. Jodi directed my backstory episode and that episode got me my first immunization. So um,

it was my character's backstory and the initial idea was that they needed to hire another actor to play me pre-transition. And I was like, I would, I'm an actor, I would, you know. And in Jinger, you're quite a said, I don't want to retraumatize you. And I was like, no, I'm an actor, I can do it. And so they weren't convinced. So we did a hair and makeup test for the character throughout her transition. And the end of the day, we got to the butt just of the looks. And I remember like,

you know, they put a fake mustache on me. I can't grow a facial hair or anything, obviously. And I went to Jodi, she was in a meeting and I like, really, you know, I was like, you know, and she looked at me and she was like, we're not to hire someone. So then they started bringing in these very bunch black male actresses and they would stand the next to me and take a photo. And then I was like, why is she just doing audition? And then as my brother, if he'd be open to it,

and he'd say, how much does it pay? And then he ended up going in for the audition, but he had an advantage because, you know, he kind of looks a little bit like me. So he, he booked it and did it. And he had regrets about it for a while because he had his own work and his own life and he, you know, wants to be defined by his work and not mine. He's in a season of really attention from it. Yeah. And people knew that work and they didn't know his work, but he

we're in a really great place around all that now and he's in a great place with all that. Your brother was the first person to tell you you were an actor. Yeah. Not a dancer. Yeah.

Which is incredible and amazing and I'm so grateful for that and he, he's genuinely

extremely proud of me and has an immense amount of respect for me as I do for him and that is wonderful. It has been dysfunctional and some ways might still be, but there is an unconditional love that we have for each other. It sounds like it. It was dysfunctional, though, in part because this world ripped you guys apart. It was the, the world's reaction to you that caused a rift because as children, he had to navigate that and you had to navigate that.

And we felt like as twins, people didn't think of us as individuals like we were like one person between and so I was more quote unquote flamboyant and visible and I got attention because I just did. And so my expression and behavior sort of defined in a lot of ways how a lot of people saw us. My brother has a, you think, I have a huge personality. My brother's personality is even bigger and he is very much himself and he, like me, has fought to be himself

authentically. And so he does not want to be compared to someone else and I get to understand that

and it's, yeah, it's interesting because like, you know, he was just always into and it was

“important for him to have his own identity and I totally get to understand that. And so he went”

about doing that, you know, when we were in boarding school together and I felt abandoned certainly. I just to let people know, you and your brother applied to a prep boarding school, an art school outside of your city in Alabama for a nice grade. Like the moment you all could, you left home. Yeah. The first few years of freshman in sophomore year, he went, we were both there and then he went back home to Mobile and finished high school there and I stayed and now I understand

wonderful for him to be away from me. So we could just like, not be twins anymore. We could like have our own identities. It was actually kind of glorious. If you're just joining us, my guest is Levarn Cox. Her new memoir is called Transcendent. More of our conversation after a short break. This is fresh air. You know, every day and up first NPR's golden globe nominated morning news

podcast, we bring you three essential stories at the heart of each story. Our questions. What

really happened? What really mattered? What happens next? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow a first wherever you get your podcasts and start your day knowing

“what matters and why. Every episode of it's been a minute, NPR's what's happening in culture podcast”

starts by asking three questions. Who? How? Why now? If the culture's asking it, we're talking about it. At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and indulge your cultural curiosity. Follow it's been a minute wherever you get your podcasts and we'll break down the zeitgeistie topics that are filling your feed. After that childhood of being bullied from like K through eighth grade. K through 12. K through 12. Yeah, even at the art school, like it got better junior and senior

year, but it was still there. This is when you start to step into we call it gender non-conforming, but it was the endogenous for you. Yeah. You were stepping into trying to figure out an identity. Meeting to, we felt like at the time, needing to express myself. But, you know, honestly, after the conversion therapy, there was, I had internalized so much transphobia and like ending up in New Orleans wearing a dress was presented to me as the absolute worst thing that could

happen to me. And in my young mind, I imagined I would be on the street and I would be homeless and a person who needed to like do unfortunate things to survive. Yeah. So it just be presented as something that was the absolute opposite of like the straightest student that I was, the human being that was who was determined to be successful. So I didn't, I didn't wear skirts and dresses until college because I was just like, well, I can't, you know, I internalized

I can't wear a dress or skirt in high school, but I did start wearing girls clothes that I would purchase from the thrift stores in mobile and in Birmingham. And it was such a fun, wonderful exploration

“and it felt like, if I like an extension of, I think it was in, it was in high school I'd read about”

Oscar Wilde. You talked about creating yourself as a work of art and I love that as a concept, you know, and I think it was. Was this also around the time when, I mean, Androgynous musical artists were pretty big. Is this like the 80s? It was certainly the 80s, and it was, it was post like the heyday of culture club, culture clubs for a album came out in 1983. So I would have been 11 years old and that was like boy George was pivotal for me in my childhood

and any Linux and just the whole British new wave that was filled with Androgyny and gender-bending and of all sorts. Even looking back at old episodes of soul-trained, there was some real

gay stuff going on. The 80s like, step they would never fly right now, got through in the 80s,

even to remain stewards who was a wonderful artist too. We don't have to take our clothes off to have a good time. Now, yeah. He was, I don't know if he was openly gay, he unfortunately passed away in the late 80s or early 90s. He had HIV/AIDS and then his song was sampled later by

“LM-AFO, I think. Yeah. But he, like he had it, he had it, you know, he thought it was pressed”

out and it was late. The hair was late. He was, he had been a member of Shalamar. Always wonder what Cherry wine was though. Never could figure out. Girl, okay, so you are my generation. You know, Cherry, that's a deep cut girl. Yes. Um, yeah, I don't know what Cherry wine is either. But he, I, he was a queen on soul-trained, like, just, these were the people who were watching. But it was, the 80s was so wonderful in that way. You made your way to New York. You wanted to be a

dancer. You wanted to be an entertainer. I always knew that I would transition to acting

because dancers, you know, have a short shelf life. And, um, and I, you know, so I imagine musical theater and brought in Broadway and then film and television is what the, what I thought and I thought I would, you know, maybe be in the chorus or something. But I could never book roles as a dancer when I, when I audition for things. And I remember the year before I moved to New York, I was at Indiana University and every year I auditioned for the Grand Ole Op Ray because they

were always auditions and regional auditions and wherever I was. And that year, I remember the dance captain asking me to show the other, because I learned picked up the choreography quickly. She asked me to show the choreography to the other people auditioning. And I was just like, oh, you know, I'm, maybe this means I'm finding, I'm finding going to get the job and I didn't get it that

And I, you know, and I was never masculine enough. By that time, I had gotten a very good technique

“as a dancer. Um, maybe, you know, I wasn't the best dancer, but I was very, I was technical. I could”

pick up choreography. Um, you know, I could do six-peer wets. And I had technique, but I didn't have an ideal dancer body. And I never figured out how to appear masculine when I was dancing. And so put it up with the, with the subtext of it all. It's so fascinating to read about your early days in New York. And it sounds like you were pretty discerning about what scenes you were part of. Because you didn't see yourself fitting into the drag queen world. You understood and appreciated

what they did. And you understood what these other groups, like they were all these other groups, and you were part of a club kid group. I was, so there was a very, like in the early 90s, there was this kind of, there was a downtown kid, so with the uptown kids, like I was a downtown girl, I was East Village. Really East Village, because the gender non-conforming thing that and draws into thing that I was doing when I moved to New York in 1993 fit better in the East

Village. But the time I made it to New York, I was, I was wearing dresses lots of vintage things.

“I remember had a black, lame vintage dress that I would wear. And then I would incorporate dance”

wear, so I could go out and dance and really do my thing. So a good chunky heel platform heel, and my head was shaved, and I shaved my trousers and drew them on in a lot of people. And I thought Grace Jones, because if they look, because look, was her age in draw tennis. The drag scene I wasn't in, but I also, like, I had, um, I had internalized transphobia, and, like, for me, there was, um, because by this time, by the time I made it to New York,

I had also Red Bell Hooks. And so I had, um, and I'd read other feminist writers who, were very skeptical of drag in this performance of womanhood that was sort of seen as mockery by some feminist. And so I was sort of contending with that and trying to, like, navigate my newfound feminist politics with, like, my gender and not wanting to sort of, like, feed into some sort of retrograde idea of womanhood. So there was, also, that was

introduced in college, but the underneath all of that was, like, a deep, deep transphobia that I didn't even turn the lies. That red is discernment, but really it was. It was a lot of, it was, like,

“I was terrified of ending up in New Orleans wearing a dress. Because I think in my mind too,”

if I embraced the womanhood, the girlhood that I knew I, I wasn't, in my mind, I thought that like, on top of, like, you know, all the stigma that you are a degenerator or something that I think I didn't turn lies about trans people, it's also that I didn't think I could be smart, even though I loved smart women. There was something, I think there was just something about,

I was never presented with images of drag performers or trans women on television. If I even saw

trans women on television at the time, that were articulate and intellectual. And even as I mentioned in the clip scene, there were so many really, really smart drag performers who were just brilliant artists. But I needed, I needed time to, like, let all that step go and, um, I just need it time. Let's take a short break. We'll continue our conversation with Loverne Cox in just a moment. Her new memoir is called Transcendent. This is fresh air. For instant clarity on world events in just

five minutes, listen to NPR news now. New episodes drop every hour with the latest on US politics, international news, the economy, health, science, technology, and more, five minutes is all it takes to get fully caught up with NPR news now. Listen, on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts. This week on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, we asked comedy legend Robert Smigel about

the moment he first knew he was funny. When I was like four or five, I could draw really well,

so I could draw Fred Flintstone and Snoopy, and then probably a couple of years later, I started drawing them having sex. Listen to the Wait Don't Tell Me podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2025, you co-created the series and starred. It's on Prime video called Clean Slate and you played Desiree at Transwoman who comes home to Mobile, Alabama after more than 20 years away to a father who'd been estranged from her played by comedian George

Wallace, and it was one of the last things the legendary Norman Lear made before he died, and here's a scene of Desiree with her father trying to find their way back to each other, and Wallace speaks first. Look at this, picking up right where we left off. All these years.

Well, you ain't got one, so, okay. My therapist says that our past and our presence are linked. Like with me, I have a pattern of choosing emotionally unavailable men, and that is linked to my past and to, well, you know, the first emotionally unavailable man in my life.

“Well, who the hell is he? Does it live around here? Do you need to go pay him a bit?”

Okay. Um, let's try something. Are you open to writing a letter to me? As a

ten-year-old girl, I always was, but you weren't able to see. So, what now?

Dr. Vera Rishi Carrera says, "Dr. Hoop, my therapist, have you all been up yet talking about me behind my back? Maybe I need to write his A as a love." She's a she. "Well, maybe I need to write A as a love." So, I think I'm just going to retire to what I imagine is my completely unchanged childhood bedroom. That's where you got it wrong. I put it in a cylinder. That was my guest, Lover and Cox, with the George Wallace in the prime video series "Clead Slate,"

and it's so funny. It's a great series. Um, you have so much compassion in it. In the same way that I see the way you write about your mother. There's a compassion there while also just showing the truth, you know?

What a joy. I've never, it's interesting. I've never just listened to that scene. I've watched it,

but I've never just listened to it. What a joy. It was working with George. I just go back to, like, how incredibly funny he was, but also how sensitive he was and how I was just, it was glorious and it's very, very loosely based on my life. And with the, sort of, question is, like, what if Lover never became famous and had a father and went back home to mobile? Is that healing to write from that place? Because you write in a great detail about the truth

about your father, which for many years you had told a different story that you had never met him,

“that he had died. And the truth is you did meet him and it was a pretty traumatic thing. And so,”

watching the series, it kind of feels like it feels like a writing of the truth, but a writing in a way that kind of takes back something. It was the writing of it, the creating of this series, like, first with Dan Ewing, our kosher runner and co-creator, and then with George, like, for years before we, you know, got a deal. That part was fun coming up with storylines and episodes and pulling things for my life. That was fun. But when it was time to actually act in and relive it,

I was triggered, again, hello, trigger. I was triggered a lot because we added a lot of things for my life. And we gave George a lot of the characteristics that my mother has. I mean, my mother's

funny, but she's not that funny. So, George is hilarious. And so, yeah, I never, obviously, had a father

“in my life. So, we had to endow that. But there was something interesting happened by the end where I”

felt this very dysfunctional, but sort of paternal relationship with George that, um, in the moment of the show, felt strangely healing in a way that I didn't expect particularly in the last episode. I, um, what do you mean? Yeah. Um, there was, there's a scene where I just, where I needed my dad and he was there. And it was everything that Desiree needed as a child that she was able to finally get from him as an adult. Um, care and feeling seen by him and feeling

protected, um, in a way that he, he had not done when she was a child. There was sometimes when he was the character and then when sometimes it's just you. And yeah, that's certainly what I needed as a child. And so, there was a moment, I just, there was a moment, I just start crying in my head. Like, he's holding me and it just, like, it just wasn't acting anymore. It was George and me. It was, I don't know. It was, I can't, like, I don't have words for it, but it was, um,

it was really beautiful, a beautiful experience for me as an actor. Um, it's a scene I can't watch. Like, I, I, I probably need like three more years to be able to watch it with some perspective, but um, how wonderful, because I mean, George is like an icon as a comedian and, and there's the comedy in this show is wonderful, but there's a lot of drama and clean slate. And he was just so dialed into that huge heart and at love and that generosity. And it was such an honor to receive

that all of that um love that he had inside, that he, um, so rendered to the character and to our

you are sitting in who you are and you are representing who you are in this lane as a trans woman.

“Do you ever want to branch out and do other types of roles that I already have? I've been very”

do you feel like it's, it's there for you that, that material? It may not exist yet, but I know that there are artists out there who I may be haven't met yet who will, who are um, writing it. I, you know, Shandarayam's cast me to play KC Duke who is a real-life human being and a brilliant woman who I got to meet and she's not transgender and inventing Anna. I'm not fully clear if the character I played and um, promising young woman is transgender, it doesn't suggest that she's

trans, um, so the audience can make this decision and I always have wondered if, um, with KC, it's

explicit that she's not trans, but if the character's not riddenous trans, um, well, like, if the character's not riddenous black and I play her, the character becomes black. If the character's not

“riddenous trans, do she become trans because I'm playing her and I think in some cases maybe,”

and in some cases maybe not, it depends on if they're source material, if I'm playing a real person. And so for me, it's really about how complicated the character is, how challenging she is to play

and less about, like whether she's trans or not. I certainly, um, I don't see any, I don't see any

limitations around what I can play, um, as an actor and I think what I'm most excited about is, um, if people see the field that I, that, that, that's a limitation, I look forward to proving them wrong. Yes, I'm very excited about that. Lover and Cox, it's been such a pleasure to meet you

“and thank you for this conversation. Thank you, um, this has really been wonderful.”

Lover and Cox's new memoir is called Transcendent, tomorrow on fresh air, actor Windle Pierce. You know him as bunk in the wire, and now he's taking on one of Shakespeare's giants, Othello, but it was playing Willie Loman on Broadway that took him somewhere personal, drawing on his own father to build that role. Pierce talks with us about his father and the men he plays. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our

interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR fresh air. You can also subscribe and watch some of our interviews on our YouTube page. This is fresh air. Fresh air's executive producer is Sam Brigger, our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers and Marie Boltonato, Lauren Krenzel, Theresa Madden, O'Nique Nazareth, Fayette Challner, Susan Nakundi, Anna Balman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer

is Molly C.B. Nesper, Roberta Shorock, directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley. I'm considered this NPR's afternoon news podcast because we're everything from politics to the economy to the world, but every story starts with a question. NPR, we stand for your right to be curious to make sense of the biggest story of the day and what it means for you. Follow consider this wherever you get your podcasts.

Recently, cyber security researchers discovered a striking computer virus. seemingly related to the conflict between the US and Iran over Iran's nuclear program. Everything about this thing screams special. A cunning cyber weapon meant to gaslight nuclear scientists. Listen to Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.