"Sense8" Star Jamie Clayton Praises "OA" For Including A Trans Character "[That] Had Zero To Do With The Story"
Sense8 star Jamie Clayton recently celebrated both her own show and fellow Netflix hit The OA for championing transgender representation on TV.
Clayton joined The OA co-creator Zal Batmanglij and Orange Is The New Black's Uzo Aduba in a panel conversation last Wednesday to discuss the work the three shows are doing to increase LGBT visibility on the small screen.
"It doesn’t matter what anybody in any white house or red house or blue house or whatever the f*ck kind of a house they live in says, there are all kinds of people in this world," Clayton told reporters at the event. "Not everyone sitting out here in front of us is white, and they’re not all men."
The trans actor, who portrays trans character Nomi on the sci-fi smash Sense8, went on to say that part of what she loves about the transgender characters in Netflix's original programming is how their stories never center on transitioning.
"You included a trans character but it had zero to do with the story," Clayton said to Batmanglij about The OA's transgender preteen, Buck. "Because trans people just exist. I’m trans, I exist, I’m sitting here. That’s what Nomi does, but it has nothing to do with why she becomes a Sense8 or the story. She just is."
On the theme of diversity, Aduba added: "When you are able to see people for their humanity, it becomes more and more challenging for you to impose on them your preconceptions, your discriminations, prejudgments. Because you now look at them as a person for who they are as an individual and perhaps not as just a group."
OITNB will premiere its fifth season June 9 and The OA will return for its second season some time next year.
