by Elisa Leonelli
October 16, 2016
Laverne Cox stars in the Fox TV remake The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again. She plays the role of mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter made famous by Tim Curry in the 1975 movie, that has become a cult classic, playing for 40 years in theater midnight screenings, with an audience of fans that dress up as the characters, perform and talk back to the screen. Cox displays the full range of her talents, not only acting but also dancing and singing, in this camp musical that requires her to wear colorful costumes, even more outlandish than in the original.
Laverne Cox (c) HFPA 2016
Interviewed by the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press, Laverne Cox explains how she studied dance and voice in college (her idol was opera singer Leontyne Price), that she has a full octave range, and for this role employs both upper and lower registers, her high head soprano falsetto and her low chest baritone voice. Her musical performance was influenced by Little Richard and Chuck Berry, Grace Jones and Tina Turner, also by David Bowie. Director Kenny Ortega, who is a choreographer, encouraged her to put a lot more movement in her dancing.
Laverne Cox as Dr. Frank-N-Furter © Steve Wilkie/FOX
The mad doctor arrives on screen singing, “I’m a sweet transvestite from Transexual Transylvania,” which we discover means she’s an alien from a planet called Transexual in the galaxy of Transylvania, and she later sings “Don’t Dream It. Be It!” Cox says that this song became her “personal mantra” when she first saw the movie in college and identified with the androgynous Tim Curry, while she was wearing girl clothes and “existed in a gender non-conforming space,” before her medical transition to a woman. “My hope is that our version of this film will open up this idea of possibilities for a new generation, that they can their best selves and who they are.”
Laverne Cox has been the face of the transgender community since Time magazine put her on the June 9, 2014 cover, with this byline: “The Transgender Tipping Point: America’s next civil rights frontier,” after she had been honored at the GLAAD Media Awards on April 12, 2014.
On June 11, 2015, Entertainment Weekly featured her on the cover dressed up as the Statue of Liberty, under the headline “America Transformation.”
Variety chose a photo of Laverne Cox in a power pantsuit for their May 5, 2015 cover titled “Hollywood Trans Formation.”
On October 11, 2016, she is wearing a lavender dress in a one of the 5 Variety covers honoring the Power of Women, alongside Miley Cyrus, Ava DuVernay, Scarlett Johansson and Helen Mirren.
In her most acclaimed supporting TV role to date, transgender Sophia in Orange is the New Black, Cox has a small arc in Season 4 where she is put in solitary confinement, “for her own protection” after being attacked in Season 3, and attempts suicide. This storyline reflects the real life predicament of Chelsea Manning, the former Army Intelligence analyst and WikiLeaks whistle-blower, who in August 2013 was sentenced to a 35-year term, that she is serving in male a military prison despited being recognized as a transgender woman. After a hunger strike and a suicide attempt, Manning was sentenced to 14-days in solitary confinement, but she will finally be allowed to proceed with gender-reassignment surgery.
Cox also played a supporting role as a tattoo artist friend of Lily Tomlin in the 2015 movie Grandma directed by Paul Weisz.
Laverne Cox is gratified that in her next television role, the CBS drama Doubt, she plays a leading role as a “buttoned-up Yale-educated brilliant lawyer,” who does pro bono work at a legal defense firm “fighting for the rights of other people, to make sure that justice is served.” She is also “pursued by this very handsome man, which feels revolutionary, because there’s not enough representation of trans women dating straight-identified men on television.”
Cox is the spokesperson for NCAVP (National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs) that “has tracked hate and violence against the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) community for over two decades.” She says that, although transgender people have enjoyed “unprecedented visibility in the media” over the past couple of years, the “violence and discrimination against trans folks” has also increased, and in particular, “if you are a Black or Latina trans person who is working-class, your life is still very difficult, and it’s not assured that you will even survive.”
Click here for edited version published on Golden Globes website