Culture

Laverne Cox Is an Emmys Winner No Matter What


 

Voting for the 2019 Emmys closes on August 29 at 10 PM PST. To highlight some of the year’s worthiest LGBTQ+ nominations, them. is partnering with alumni from the GLAAD Media Institute to run a series of op-eds about the performances and shows that touched us most.

Marilyn Monroe. Marlon Brando. Denzel Washington. Viola Davis. Meryl Streep. These phenomenal actors will be remembered by American audiences for generations to come, immortalized both by their performances and accomplishments; they’re among the rare pantheon of stars who tackle their characters with the precision of a brain surgeon, backed up by years of training, personal experience, and research into the lives they portray. And we now have Laverne Cox to count among them, an actor who embodies every role with a commitment to authenticity and an electrifying energy. Her Emmy-nominated performance as Sophia Bursett on Orange Is the New Black, a transgender hairstylist and ex-firefighter who ends up incarcerated for credit card fraud, is no exception.

Audiences have latched onto Sophia’s story and cheered for her success from the first season to the last of the hit Netflix show, myself included. I found myself entranced by Sophia’s beauty and grace as she transitioned and vyed for her son’s tolerance, her wife’s love, and her own self-acceptance. As the child of a transgender parent, I can relate to Sophia’s sometimes-tumultuous relationship with her family. In one memorable scene from season one, Sophia seeks her wife’s approval on an outfit before quickly being told to act her age. Sophia says, “Well, I never got to be a teenage girl!” It’s the exact thing my parent said to me as I confiscated one of my middle school shirts from her wardrobe.

Laverne Cox was born in Mobile, Alabama, and it’s quite something that this solidly red Southern state created one of the most celestial and brilliant black transgender actors of our generation. Orange is the New Black became her breakout role after appearing on various reality and narrative television shows. Allegedly, none of the actors going into the audition process knew what they were getting into — all they knew was that they were auditioning for a web series about women in jail. Cox had no idea that this was going to be the role of a lifetime, or one that would put her on the map. Today she’s a celebrity who carefully and considerately uses her platform to advocate for the rights of transgender individuals in the USA, coining the hashtag #TransIsBeautiful — now a household term in LGBTQ+ spaces.

Throughout the duration of Orange is the New Black, upwards of thirty women have seen their story told through the lens of our mass incarceration crisis. The stories of the women on Orange reflect those of real women currently behind bars, facing the horrors of our prison-industrial complex. Happy endings are all too rare for women in American prisons, so audiences braced for the worst as we watched Sophia heading into the last season.

We saw Sophia struggle, fall flat on her face, and fight to get back up again. We cheered for her, we cried for her, and we hoped for her to win. Nourishing audiences with hope, Cox fed and blessed the masses by exhibiting the acting talent that she has honed and perfected over decades. Cox has proven herself a phenomenon — one who brought us on Sophia’s journey with her for six years, fully manifesting and becoming Sophia Bursett. It’s something that only the best of actors can do properly, especially with the deluge of TV and streaming series we’re living among.



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