A Quote by Brian Michael Smith

Playing a Black trans character on a TV show is a story that needs to be told.

Brian Michael Smith

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Black Character Needs Playing Show Story Trans TV TV Show

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Brian Michael Smith

I felt like it was a courageous show [Black-ish] from the beginning. We are a black family - we're not a family that happens to be black. But the show is not even about us being black. The show is about us being a family. That is groundbreaking - on TV, the black characters either happen to be black or they're the "black character," where everything they say is about being black. I think that's the genius.

Tracee Ellis Ross

If you get on a TV show that's successful, odds are that you're playing the same character for as many years as the show is running, which can be its own blessing, but it can also be a curse because you're playing the same thing and that can be tiresome.

Sarah Paulson

I just didn't want to get bored playing a character, and that's kind of the benefit of doing films; you've lived with a character for four or five months and that's it, and you walk away from that character and you feel like you told a story.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan

I set out to tell my story, which is based on my family. Dr. Cosby told his story in 'The Cosby Show.' The comparisons stop there in terms of my creation of the show. We just both happen to have black fathers at the center of it.

Kenya Barris

When we have a trans woman playing a trans woman, then you see, 'Oh wait, this is what trans really is. This is what it looks like: a person.' That sends a message to trans kids that they are valid in their identities that they are allowed to exist.

Nicole Maines

When we get to a point when trans folks are included in the creative process, the narrative will be much more authentic. Trans actors playing trans roles is a key part of that. But some of the trans talent is not even making it into the audition room, let's be honest.

Trace Lysette

Trans women, and women in general, have so many constraints placed on our bodies. As women, we are told not to show our bodies, and as trans people, we've been told not to exist.

Trace Lysette

If someone writes a stereotyped trans character, it's really harmful on a macro level in solidifying public perception of trans people because we're such a small minority group but it's also detrimental to the life of the actor, who needs the paycheck even if the role is bad.

Patti Harrison

In the 1970s in black and Asian households up and down the country, there's a familiar story that when we saw a non-white person on TV we would call the rest of the family to the sitting room to have a look. The story that is less well known is what it was like to be that one black person on TV.

Lenny Henry

Black Trans Lives Matter, to me, is really different. I think it speaks most directly to the marginalization and disenfranchisement of trans people within the black community.

Alicia Garza

Trans people have been repeatedly told that we don't have the right to live. And Black people have been told that by our slave masters and continue to be told that by society. We have, generationally, bled this kind of hatred.

Dominique Jackson

A black character is much more than just a black character; he's a character, period. So show the world as it is. Even with all your artistic license, you make a political choice.

Raoul Peck

Not too long after 'OITB' debuted, I was at NewFest and I saw 'Black Is Blue,' a short film by Cheryl Dunye about a Black trans man trying to make it in Oakland. It was the first time I could recall seeing a Black trans man on screen and this was in 2015.

Brian Michael Smith

In novels you're able to occupy character's internal thoughts and it's really hard to do in a film or a TV show. When you're reading a character's thoughts or when it's in first person, you're reading kind of their own story, so you have the opportunity to see what makes that character complex or complicated. And to me that's what the whole point of fiction is.

Joe Meno

Surgical intervention can be precisely what a trans person needs - it is also not always what a trans person needs. Either way, one should be free to determine the course of one's gendered life.

Judith Butler

The black characters on TV are the sidekicks, or they're insignificant. You could put all the black sidekicks on one show, and it would be the most boring, one-dimensional show ever. Even look at the black women on 'Community' and 'Parks and Recreation' - they are the archetype of the large black women on television. Snide and sassy.

Issa Rae

A Quote by Brian Michael Smith

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