"Orange is the New Black" stars Taylor Schilling, Uzo Aduba, Laura Prepon, Natasha Lyonne, Laverne Cox and Taryn Manning, among others. (Photo : Twitter/OITNB)
"The Danish Girl" actress Rebecca Root is set to star in the new BBC show "Boy Meets Girl," the first mainstream sitcom in the United Kingdom to cast a transgender actor in a lead transgender role.
In the United States, Laverne Cox became the first transgender actor to play a lead transgender role in a mainstream sitcom with her role as inmate Sophia Burset in "Orange Is The New Black." She was also the first transgender woman to became an Emmy nominee.
Root hopes that "Boy Meets Girl" will have the same effect in the U.K. as "OITNB" has in the U.S. In a recent interview with The Guardian, she said, "We've had cisgender actors in trans roles for too long. It's about time we had trans actors in trans roles."
During the interview, Root explained that "Boy Meets Girl" is also the first sitcom in the U.K. to feature romance and sex scenes between a trans character and a person living the same gender as they were born called cisgender man.
Root's "Boy Meets Girl" role is a transgender woman named Judy who is in her 40s. She meets in a bar a younger man named Leo (Harry Hepple). According to the trans actress, Leo is very mature in his reaction when Judy breaks the news that she is transgender and "Boy Meets Girl" is about "how they navigate that, how he navigates the reactions from others."
Meanwhile, Root's "The Danish Girl" co-star Eddie Redmayne is set to play Lili Elbe, the 20th century transgender icon who was one of the first identifiable recipients of sex reassignment surgery. In an interview Out, the Oscar winner said, "I can't tell you how nervous I am at the start of a thing."
"The Danish Girl" is set to hit theaters on Nov. 27.
