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Identity

Netflix's New 'Tales of the City' Series Is Packed With Trans Talent

The highly anticipated Netflix series will feature some of the industry's most talented trans actors, writers, and directors—including Jen Richards, Daniela Vega, and Silas Howard.
Photo on the left of actress Daniela Vega, Photo on the right of actress Jen Richards
Photo of Daniela vega by Nathan Bajar for Broadly, Photo of Jen Richards by Christina Gandolfo

In 2017, Netflix announced a new series, Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, starring, among others, Laura Linney and Ellen Page. It will adapt a beloved nine-book cult saga first serialized in the San Fransisco Chronicle in 1978 by author Armistead Maupin. The series follows the subculture of San Francisco by way of a group of people residing at 28 Barbary Lane, an apartment building owned by a trans woman who likes to leave neat joints on people's doormats. The story will be re-envisioned as a 10-part Netflix original limited series in 2019.

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Tales of the City has seen multiple adaptations, including on radio and television. The Netflix rendition will come at a time when the film industry is more equipped to accurately portray it than ever before: Following in the wake of Transparent and Pose, Armistead Maupin's Tales of The City reportedly has an "entirely queer writing team," and "features LGBTQ people in front of and behind the camera." The integration of queer people throughout mainstream queer-focused productions was a widely visible initiative of Jill Soloway's Amazon Video series Transparent in 2014, and productions that attempt to tell queer narratives without having LGBTQ and trans representation throughout the cast and crew have been harshly criticized by LGBTQ viewers in the years since.

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Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City's showrunner, Lauren Morelli, is a veteran of the acclaimed Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, where she was a co-executive producer and writer. For Tales, Morelli has brought on "talented trans actors and actresses" like Jen Richards, the Emmy nominated actress and filmmaker, as well as Daniela Vega, Josiah Victoria Garcia, a non-binary actor, and queer performer Caldwell Tidicue, better known as Bob the Drag Queen. Morelli also brought on trans directors Silas Howard, who directed for both Transparent and Pose, as well as Sydney Freeland. Author Thomas Page McBee is the series' only trans writer.

The announcement of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City is the latest indication that the age of queer media created by queer people has only just begun—but that, at last, it's here.