Miss Benny is ready to share her gender identity.
After wrapping up promotion for her new Netflix series, Glamorous, which excitedly is extremely queer and stars Sex and the City‘s Kim Cattrall, Miss Benny is speaking out.
In an essay shared with TIME, the actress said she has been quietly transitioning for years but is now ready to let the world in. “I’m a proud person, but admittedly it’s still a bit daunting to say those words publicly,” she wrote.
thank u @TIME for letting me write about my transition for the first time. ???? my pronouns are she/her. i am overwhelmed with hard-earned joy. happy pride ♥︎https://t.co/uVmYdhYLbg pic.twitter.com/1jpbGknphE
— miss benny (@MissBenny) June 26, 2023
The star grew up in an extremely religious household in Texas where “queerness was totally not the vibe.” For years she would pray to wake up and “be like her sisters,” only to wake up heartbroken again.
“Over time I became highly aware of how unwelcome LGBT topics would be in my hometown. And so I kept my head down and looked for an immediate escape.”
Miss Benny’s Road to Hollywood
Her need for change drew her to Hollywood, where she started out singing on YouTube before she persued a career in acting. However, it was a rocky start as she endured many rejections because it “wasn’t time for someone like me.” Eventually, she started picking up roles in television. She starred in Love, Victor and American Horror Stories. Then came Glamorous. The producers were looking for “a gender-nonconforming queer Latino makeup fanatic.” They told her in the audition room that she got the gig.
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“I fell to my knees with tears in my eyes. This was the first time in my life somebody looked at me and said, ‘Yes, it’s time for you.'”
She landed the role in 2019, but did not begin filming for years. By then, Miss Benny had been slowly transitioning. She met with the series creator Jordon Nardino and worked with him and executive producer Kameron Tarlow to rewrite her character to mirror her own journey.
“[Their] only concern was ever about my own personal comfort and, funnily, whether or not the pitch of my voice would change over the course of filming (lol!). And so, from that moment on, I worked closely with Jordon to ensure the authenticity of Marco’s identity in the show.”
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Glamorous follows “Marco Mejia (Miss Benny), a young gender non-conforming queer person whose life seems to be stuck in place until he lands a job working for legendary makeup mogul Madolyn Addison (Cattrall).”
The series is now streaming on Netflix.
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