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Laverne Cox opened up about her experience performing in the musical comedy The Drowsy Chaperone with an all-trans and non-binary cast.
Speaking with PEOPLE during the red carpet at the 2025 WWD Honors in New York City on Oct. 28, the actress called her time in the show — which ran for one night at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 20 — “a dream come true.”
“I played the title role of The Drowsy Chaperone, and it was with Breaking the Binary Theatre, which was incredible. So we had all-trans and non-binary talent on stage,” Cox, 53, explains.
Cox went on to say that she is still processing just how much the show — which spoofs the lavish, carefree style of 1920s-era American musicals — meant to her.
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“I still don’t have words,” she continues. “Carnegie Hall has been a part of my life since I was a kid in terms of just dreaming of Carnegie Hall, going to Carnegie Hall, different concerts and recitals. So getting to perform there was a dream come true. It was magical and the cast was magical, and the experience, the character, it was the perfect way to make my Carnegie Hall debut.”
The Orange Is the New Black alum stressed the importance of trans and non-binary representation in the mainstream theater world.
“We could use more representation in theater everywhere,” she says.
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Most recently, Cox starred in the Prime Video comedy series Clean Slate, a show about an old-school and outspoken Alabama car wash owner, and his estranged child, who returns home as a proud, trans woman named Desiree (Cox).
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Cox, who was raised in Alabama, previously told PEOPLE that much of the series was based on her real life experiences, though noted that they were “not so funny at the time.”
She went on to say that she took her “contentious, conflicted relationship with home,” and the “trauma of my childhood” and made them “quite hilarious for the show.”
“[Filming the series] was triggering, almost every day,” she continued. “Some actors might disagree, but I think sometimes you have to be triggered as an actor to get to what the character might be feeling.”
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“If you do have lived experiences that are challenging, you can give it to your art,” she continued. “And then, maybe the people who are watching it, who may be experiencing the same thing, will understand they’re not alone. That cultivates empathy. And that is the gift of being an artist and going through horrible, awful stuff, is that maybe I can use this in my work, and show someone else that they’re not alone.”
