Drama Queens - Laverne Cox

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Before she became a groundbreaking actress, activist, and cultural trailblazer, Laverne Cox was a kid in Mobile, Alabama, searching for a place to belong. Today, she opens up about family, the role that changed her life, and what it means to carry the weight—and opportunity—of being "the first." Plus, Laverne and Sophia go off on the hypocrisy of government officials when it comes to trans rights and discuss what other agenda may be at play.  Laverne's memoir "Transcendence" is in bookstores now.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, everyone. It's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome back to this week's Work in Progress, friends. We are joined by a personal hero of mine, both as an artist and as an incredible advocate who fearlessly stands up and out and loud and proud for her community and for the rest of us, too. today we are joined by none other than Laverne Cox. She is here to talk about her new book, Transcendant, which is one of the more beautiful things I've read in a long time. And you know Laverne from history

making milestones of the Emmy nominations, the magazine covers. Her breakout role in Orange is the New Black that transformed transgender representation in pop culture and all of the incredible things that she's done since. I mean, my God, if I read her whole bio, we're going to be here for an hour before I even get her on the show. She has been such a, I mean, my God, like a beacon of light in a world that has not often understood her. She has broken barriers. She has led both as a leader and a culture maker.

And she has helped to shift the world around her for the better. And through her acting, her producing her activism. And now, transcendent, she is going even for. far, they're reflecting on family, identity, faith, trauma, healing, and ambition, the pressure that comes with being the first. And she's sharing so many parts of her remarkable journey with us in a way that I am just absolutely in awe of. So let's type in and hear about how Laverne is going about sharing her story, continuing to be an activist in 2026 when it's more dangerous than ever for trans people to be visible and where she's finding joy. Let's dive in with LaVern. I have to tell you,

yes. And I would love, depending on how your week looks, to ask you a few more questions about this, but the TLDR is, I'm getting close to finishing my first book and had no idea it would be so hard or such actual torture. And I feel like you coming this week, in this moment of this dumpster fire of a fucking year with this book like you you feel like my fairy godmother right now just being like girl you can finish your book and you can say the things so thank you said you're almost done what like what phase you're done with the first draft i'm done with the first draft i'm now in that phase of editing you know i wondered how i would do it and then i realized i had

far too much and then I've had to cut some things that I love for length which is hard and then there's the full story and then there's the world where people like us who are who don't become famous from writing but are famous and then write a book can't exactly always tell the full story. I tried to protect people by changing names and stuff but I I just didn't think there was a point to write it if I wasn't going to like go there. What's the point? like, I was like, if I'm going to do this, it's going to be raw.

For me, I was like, I want to say what happened, but like not beyond that. What if I learned? And from the humble beginnings from that abuse, that shame, that trauma, how am I an adult who is healthy

and happy and loves myself? Yeah, but torture feels like exactly the right word. I just didn't know. No one told me that. No one never told me that. Like I, like no one's, I've never heard an author like say it was torture. Uh-huh. It was like I thought I was going to die.

Yes. Oh, there have been weeks where I'm like, I don't think I slept last night. Why am I so stressed? Why is this so hard? Why is this so scary? And nobody talks about it. I wonder when I think about the way this sort of pendulum of, society swings and how if we could have gone back to you know five ten wherever we want to

pick years ago when we were on an upswing I think back to the things you share in the book about childhood you know this little kid in mobile Alabama who probably felt more like a lot of us feel now afraid and I wonder it sort of personalizes even more my first question I love to ask people is would your eight or nine year old self see themselves in you today if they got to meet? Like if you got to sit down with that little version of you, do you think that child would be so blown away by you living your life? I wonder if she would, the eight or nine year version, I wonder if she'd be scared. Really?

I wonder she'd be scared because there's like, there is the fantasy that like I definitely had as an eight, nine year old that like this could be possible. for sure, but I wonder if I, that eight, nine year old would be ready to like, witness, like, to understand that this is who I became. I wonder she was so, she was made to feel afraid of, of this. And I think because she internalized so much transphobia, so I, I, I haven't, I've never heard someone ask the question quite like that. They always say, what would you say to your eight-year-old self, but if you met,

And I'm thinking, and honestly, I'm like, I wonder if she'd be frightened. I wonder if she'd be sort of in disbelief. But I also wonder if she'd be in awe. I mean, just the visual part. But then I know she'd recognize me, like, recognize, like, the spirit. Because the spirit is the same. Yes. That she would know very well.

And then I think she would see that, like, so much has been, so much armor has been taken in a way so that that spirit can flow more freely and be more apparent in the world and less sort of armored up and protected. I love to think about it. When I talk to people about it, I always think like if I were in the totally emotionally raw,

sci-fi movie of my dreams, myself today would walk onto like a playground, you know, in Manhattan, and meet up with my nine-year-old self and what would that be like? And I think it's actually so profound that you say that that little girl might be so blown away by the possibility

and maybe a little afraid of it. It's because it's one of the things I've come to wonder about why there is so much of a reaction to trans folks. And I think about this a lot and I think it really related it. I'm going to show the people at home because the book is called Transcendant.

And I know, you know, when this airs, it will have just been out for a few weeks. So if you don't have a copy yet, what are you doing? But when I looked at the title, I thought about it because transcendence as a concept is holy. It's very spiritual. The idea that you can transcend something is about transformation. transformation is alchemy. Alchemy is magic. I believe for myself the experience of my life in our community and the blessings I have as a cis person, as a queer cis person, having trans friends, is that of all of us on earth, trans people are miracles. I think people are afraid of trans people

because limits don't exist in the same way. The stories humans have told themselves, you know are not all that's true. Absolutely. And you're so in touch with the essence of humanity itself is a big concept. Freedom as a permission slip, not an idea. And I think for people who are not free,

that is frightening. Absolutely. A lot of the reason that there's the backlash against trans people specifically, and first is because we kind of are the solution. We're the answer, right? Like if I can be assigned male at birth and told I'm male and I'm supposed to, you know, dress this way, act this way, live this way.

And I say, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not true. I'm actually, I was assigned male, but I've always been a girl and now I'm a woman. and I can make the choice to live in that truth. And after a lot of struggles, years of struggle that you read about in the book, I can get to a place where I am living in my truth and throw off those shackles that people have sort of put on me. I can transcend your ideas of who you think I'm supposed to be.

And if I can do it, you as a cis person, Sophia, can do it. And a non-queer cis woman or man can also do. It doesn't have to look like being trans, but you don't have to subscribe to what people tell you that men and women should be and should do. And that is a threat to the patriarchal system. And particularly in this fascist, Christian nationalist moment, it is a threat to the fascism

that they're trying to sort of roll in patriarchy. essential to fascism. And so we see there's, I don't think this, it's, it's all connected for me. I don't think it's a mistake that when we have all this anti-trans bigotry, there is the rolling back of reproductive rights, right? All these like hurdles to get, to getting reproductive care. Florida is, it's such a great example with so much it is. But in Florida, for example, not only doctors can administer gender affirming care when 80% of transgender Floridian receive their gender affirming care from nurse practitioners.

Yes. So, effectively, 80% of trans people who live in Florida can access gender affirming care. That's children and adults. So that's one of those sort of trap laws that they use to kind of deny its health care. And so that is not disconnected. from racism, from sexism.

It's all connected. We'll be back in just a minute, but here's a word from our sponsors. Listen. And you're there. For heart-wrenching knockouts. The world's biggest stage. And breathtaking triumph.

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Stream it all live on TSN Radio. Available on IHeard Radio. The thing that you continue to highlight in your book, the ability to transcend the rules and make something new. But also, how did this start with us? You know, I had a moment. I was in the car with one of my managers, Morgan, yesterday, and we were sort of talking about, you know,

how people often don't realize something as an issue until it affects them personally. And I was like, well, what about empathy? And then I had a moment of thinking about people who aren't educated or whatever. Then I was like, oh, wait, am I being empathetic in this moment? Am I having the empathy that, like, I'm suggesting other people should have? And so I'm constantly, like, because it starts with me and charity begins at home. So when I'm like doing what we should be doing out there, I'm like, am I doing it? How can I be more empathetic in my life?

Am I having a moment of like lacking empathy for people who have been propagandized to who we were talking about my ex who just. And so many people who actually, if they faced the reality, like particularly white people, my ex is a white, straight white Republican cop. And I think, like, if he were actually to face the reality of, like, this structural racism that exists in this country, how the police have been an enforcement of that structural racism since slave patrols and that that hasn't stopped. You know, I mean, one time he was like, how in 20, it was 24, how in 2024 are the police still a racist institution, right?

And, like, I was like, I don't know. And I was kind of like, I said it because I just need, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, have we broken up? I think we had broken up and we were at the 30, after I break up with someone I'd do 30 days no contact. And then so it's past the 30 days. And he was like, and wanting to get back together. And I was just like, I can never be cool with the police thing. And like, I just let it all hang. I hadn't said it just that way.

Right. And I was like, I still, this is the truth to me. And he was like, how, how, how? And I was just like, stop and Priske is bad. And he was like, that's not true. And I was like, you're a cop. You're a near, and he believed it. Yeah.

I was just like, how do you not know? You're an actual police officer. You're like, you don't know that Eric Adams brought back Stop and Frisk? Like you, like, he really didn't know. Yeah. And so I was like. I think that's one of the interesting things. When you sit at an intersection of more experience or more

wisdom, you kind of experience these duly weighted scales, right? Like, you shouldn't in 2026 have to teach anyone. Like, they can go out and learn. But if we don't open the people to learning or even investigating in order to be taught by teaching at all, do we lose them? And it's, and it's crazy. People don't even have the frame. People don't even have the frame. Like, What is abundantly clear to me now is that people don't actually have, because things have been so mis-framed. And that's what I've been struggling with over the past like three years. Like three years ago, I realized we were like, we, that trans people had lost the culture and we were really five. Like that, I was like, oh shit.

We were real. So for the past like three years, I've been like trying to figure out how to rhetorically sort of combat this without having. conversations or debates around my humanity. I don't want to have a conversation on the oppressor's terms about my right to exist as myself. And so it's like, how do I have that conversation? And the world has kind of given me, we've gotten empirical data, right? So we have a project 2025. We have this current regime that it, like, is introduced, you know, thousands of executive

orders that seek to raise trans people. Like on page four, Project 225, race. words from every piece of legislation or policy that is this in a federal level. Some of those words were transgender, gender identity, reproductive rights, abortion, E.I, etc. Right. And they've gone about doing a lot of that. Like, the head of the president of the Heritage Foundation went on television. I said that I was in the video a few days ago. And I said, you know, Project 2025, like 60% is 60% done. Yes. president of the Heritage Foundation was just literally on TV last week saying how excited he was that, you know, he said we gave 1,900-something action items for the president to do in Project 2025.

He's achieved about 1,045 or so of them, right? Yeah. So he was on TV. And so then I go on the view and say this. And in the comment section, this, well, someone reacted to the video and clipped it and didn't do the whole thing. And it said, it's 2026. Are we still talking about Project 2025? Oh my God, girl.

I was like, girl, and he was a gay Republican. Come on. I'm like, you don't know that your man from the Heritage Foundation was just on TV. Bragging about this in open. Last week, girl. Yeah, like out in the open air, fellas. Come on. It's crazy to me.

But it's also by design. Yes. So it's by design that people that they don't want educated, right? Donald Trump said I love that poorly educated. from Reagan back in the 80s that we, you know, when they didn't want to make, when all of a sudden, you know, public funding for universities, like they limited that, limited Pell grants, and then allow universities just to raise the cost of going to school. It's because they don't, they want fewer people to be educated.

Yes. They've demonized education. And more college educated people vote Democrat than Republican, but fewer people are going to college. It's all by design. We're in a really precarious. situation right now. And what this moment presents us with, if we take the opportunity, though, that a Harris administration probably wouldn't have, is the understanding, like, looking at, like, thinking about John Roberts and how this has been, you know, 45-year project for him,

and Heritage Foundation, 50-year project. And a lot of their sort of wet dreams of deregulation, rolling back abortion, Chevron deference, all these, a lot of things. to the Supreme Court that have happened to Supreme Court. It's in the gutting of the administrative state, right? Things that would regulate them. This is their wet, dream come true. And they have been patient and have kept the same goals, but like switch the messaging up, right?

Like now we say, they'll say DEI now. It was critical race theory a few years ago. It was affirmative action before that. It was welfare queens before that. So they maybe changed the language, but the goals are still the same. And so then where's our mandate for freedom for the people? Where's our mandate to give power back to the people and our in our structures and institutions with a long-term project to undo this?

Yes. And there is really a need when apartheid, when apartheid, when apartheid needed in South Africa, they wrote a new constitution. Yes. We'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors. Do you ever think about a random pop culture moment? Like something that dominated the culture and then quietly disappeared? We do constantly. This is Bestie Listen. Every week, we revisit the most niche corners of pop culture.

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That's part of the thing I think we need. there has been so much evil, you know, bigotry, hatred, racism, sexism, violence that has organized and funded itself to launch these long-term plans and structures. And a lot of us over here who just want to love our neighbors are like, la la, la. Like, we got to organize and make plans in the way. We have to be as ruthless for good as they are for harm. and I think it is the I do believe it is sort of the task of our lifetime of our generation certainly

I'm curious like because look you and I are the same like we will get a big system this year this happened this year this happened if you don't know about that like I these are my favorite conversations and

I want to make sure I give you your flowers in this hour and make sure that people get to hear certain things from you and you said something that I'm really curious about because you said you feel like three years ago trans folks lost the culture and in your book there is so much beauty in the dogged pursuit in the relentlessness to be an artist even when you didn't see artists like you in the world and culture making especially the way so much of it starts in the trans community in the black community, in the gay community.

How do you think about that as an artist? What feels different than when it was finally your time? And how do you feel like we get it back? We don't get it back. We keep moving forward because it wasn't, you know, because visibility, again, it was a moment of visibility, but there wasn't, we didn't, there wasn't an organized movement. Well, there was progress being made because a lot of the reaction to, you know,

when we think about the North Carolina HB2 bill, the bathroom bill from 2016, that was a response to a city, a city in North Carolina that it passed, that it added trans people and gained lesbian bill to their human rights protections. So that these are immutable characteristics that should be covered against being discriminated against.

And so that was starting to happen on a state level that was starting to happen in different cities, that we were being covered under human rights protection. and under civil rights protection. So it would become illegal to discriminate against us for being gay, trans, LGBTQ plus. And so that was progress. And then now the rollback of that is what we're seeing with.

They weren't able to do it with bathrooms because people were like, that's ridiculous. Initially they weren't. But they went to sports. And that was, and they poll tested this. They were like, of all the trans issues, what like, you know, pisses you off most? And because so many people,

don't think of trans women as women. They thought trans people, trans women, specifically in sports. And that was the Trojan horse that usher in banning gender forming care. And then so many people like, you know, gender forming care for children, there's so much misinformation about that and so much misunderstanding about what it means to be trans. That that is an old school, Anita Bryant. What about the children kind of argument that has been very successful? at creating a permission structure to not only take away gender from and care for young people,

but also for adults. And then to usher in, now we have bathroom bands, right? So there's a dehumanization that happens from the rhetoric around trans women in sports and then trans children, mutilating children, a man and girls' sports. And it's not happening. And it's humanizing language. when there's like the reality, like most of the states, I remember I'll know, there's two things I think about when I think about trans girls in sports. He was the governor, Stephanie Ruhl on MSNBC.

This is iconic video, iconic to me anyway, where the governor of West Virginia had just signed a sports ban banning trans girls from sports. And Stephanie Rul was like, and he was like, I used to coach sports and we don't want anybody, you know, taking advantage and having an undue, you know, doing something that would be unfair. And she was like, are there any examples in your state of somebody, you know, doing this? And he was like, well, I don't, I don't know. You know, do you know any trans athletes? And you're saying, well, not that I know of. And he was like, well, she was like, well, why are you passing this? Like, if there's no evidence that you're aware of, that you can cite of someone taking advantage and having, you know, or you don't even know of any trans people in your state, why are you signing, why are you spending legislative time to pass this and signing it into law, right?

especially when like, you know, education, health care, all the things, right? But they can pass an anti-trans bill like, hun. They'll do it. And then so, and then there was, I think it was it, was it, oh, I see get the state, Fisher Wells is from. I'm like, thinking Kentucky, I may be wrong, but she, oh, there's this devastating, a beautiful yet devastating video of her testifying before her state legislators and talking about how she, the field hockey team, how, like, they, in middle school, they, the girls' field hockey team just did, was non-existent, but she wanted to play field hockey. So she went and got girls and

organized and got the girls together, like, form a field hockey team. And they start practicing and they were ready to play their first game. And right before the first game, she found out that she couldn't play because she's trans. And she was the one who, like, organized the whole thing. And she was like, I just want to play, you know. I, you know, and if we have, we're not great. Like she was, it was a team. She's not about dominating or unfair. She just wanted to play with her friends. And she was the only trans athlete that anyone knew of in the state.

And I think the lawmakers even said how brave she was. And then they passed the ban and signed it into law banning her this one girl from playing, from playing sports. One little girl in an entire state. But that's not, that's not unusual. That's what it is. The NCAA said of like the. what was it, 15,000 athletes.

510,000 athletes in the NCAA and only 10 were trans. Thank you for that. 10 of 510,000. It's like, what are we doing here? And I think it's crazy to realize that the right has learned the hard way.

Like, well, everybody knows a woman. Everybody knows a queer person. They've learned that in the sort of unknown space. So many of us know trans people. We don't know our trans. So many of us know people like me are lucky enough to know and openly love trans people in our lives. And what's crazy to me is it almost seems like they realized, oh, because the numbers are smaller and we can make these people seem unknown. We can create a whole fiction. Yes. We can create a trans bogeyman. Yes.

It's full fiction. Let's make, we don't have trans people on to talk about trans people. We'll just like everybody, and this is leftist, people on the left on the right, feeling bold to talk about trans issues without a trans person in sight. And everybody has an opinion. Like everybody, you know, and I watch a lot of leftist media and like, and I just can't, you know, I won't name the show. But they were just like this, these very progressive leftists were talking about, well,

I think there is a question about, you know, trans health care for young people. I'm like, why is there a question? And why is it your business? Can I ask a question about that? Because here's what drives me crazy. People don't realize gender affirming care for kids is often letting them go to a therapist who affirms them and calling them whenever name they want. Maybe throwing out their hair, maybe cutting their hair. A haircut, a piece of clothing.

Sometimes in their teens, they go on puberty blockers. By the way, so do so many cis kids for a variety of health reasons. It's nobody's business. What makes me crazy, though, is nobody talks about gender-affirming care when Matt Gates is out there getting 40 vials of Botox stuck in his face. Or half the Republican electeds, by the way, and probably half the Democrats, too, have all had hair plugs. Nobody complains when some rich girl's dad gets her a set of implants for her high school graduation or a nose job when she turned 16. Nose jobs at 16 or younger. I know it.

But it's actually, but the thing is when it's not, when it's non-transgates, when it's this, it's, it's, it's. It's like not actually not our business. It's a decision that the child makes with their parent and their doctor. But when it comes to trans folks, it all of the sudden, I mean, when you, the Scrametti case that was argued at the Supreme Court that banned in her from a care, at least the decision was limited only in that particular state. I think was Tennessee. So it's not like federal. But they were arguing that this is new medicine, that's experimental. And none of that's actually true.

It's a lie. At the Supreme Court, like, it was crazy. And the argument was that this is not gender discrimination because of sex, because of gender discrimination, because both trans boys and trans girls can't get hormones or puberty blockers. Insane. You can't. You can't. If you have forescious puberty and you need puberty blockers, if you need for whatever reason hormones and male hormones and you're assigned male or female hormones, you can get those.

but if you're trans, you can't. But that's not gender discrimination. Yeah, Joe Rogan's out here talking about how he's on tea and it's changed his life. And I'm like, hey, Joe Rogan, you have gender affirming care. And Joe Rogan, but it's also talked about on his podcast, how he loves trans porn. How he loves trans porn. He's had a few guys come on and talk about their addiction to trans porn.

So he's okay to fetishize people and also take their health care, but not let them have health care agency. Absolutely. They're connected. Of course. They're connected. And in the right, I believe, in the right-wing imagination when they were doing this,

don't say gay stuff in Florida, and like any mention of trans anything in school is grooming because they in the Republican imagination, transness is only always sexual. Yes, and queerness too. Because they're watching the trans porn. Because we're not watching it. I'm 54 years old.

I know a lot of trans people. I don't know any trans women or men. I don't know any trans people who watch trans porn. I know a lot of straight men, straight men. And I can't tell anybody who they are. Whatever. They identify straight, straight,

identify. Sure. Know a lot of them who watch, they're the ones who watch in trans porn. And it was the second most search porn category of 2025. Yes. And it was the most legislatively repressive year for trans people ever. Yes.

These things are connected. I am having such a good time talking to Lever. And I just, I can't let her go. This will be the end of part one of our episode, and we will be back for a part two to get into all the specifics on the book and so much more. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.