When it comes to daytime TV, anything can, and will, happen. While bringing characters back from the dead is par for the course, exposing a popular character as trans is not.
Yesterday The Bold and the Beautiful introduced its first trans character. The character, model Maya Avant, has been on the show since 2013, but this week viewers got a major bombshell: Maya was born a male and used to be called Myron. As so often happens with soaps, some suspension of disbelief is required; entire storylines were once devoted to the fate of the daughter Maya supposedly gave birth to.
The details may not quite add up, but it's a daring move for the CBS show nonetheless. In contrast with shows like Orange is the New Black, Maya isn't played by a trans woman. Cisgender actress Karla Mosley plays the beauty, but says she's been consulting GLAAD to get the role right.
"As someone who is an artist and an activist, I know how important trans issues are — how it's life and death for people at this point," Mosley told Us Weekly. "The more that we in Hollywood can help people to understand what it is to be transgender, what that experience might be like for someone, and just to normalize it, I think we have the possibility of really changing some hearts and lives.
"I think that that's probably part of why they came to me with this," she added. "In addition to the fact that it really fits Maya's story in this kind of amazing way that no one could've ever predicted, I think that they also knew that I would be totally ready and willing to talk about these things in an open way."
It's too early to tell how Maya's story will play out. Will a soap opera be able to do the trans experience justice?
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