"Good Girls" star Isaiah Stannard on discovering he was trans

Brut America

This young actor's audition for the NBC show Good Girls was so inspiring that creators rewrote the character as trans for him.  Isaiah Stannard tells Brut how he found out he was trans during casting.

Transcript

00:00Being a trans actor in Hollywood, I mean, I can't say that I've met other trans teen actors.

00:07It just seems that there's not that many opportunities.

00:16It started out as a cis boy named Ben, and he was going to be bullied for, like,

00:24being feminine and stuff. And then I auditioned, and my agent was like,

00:29what if the character was a girl, and she was being bullied for a similar reason?

00:35And then I got it, and I found out I was trans, like, shortly after that.

00:55I was kind of figuring it out, like, before I auditioned and as I was auditioning and stuff,

01:02and I don't remember exactly when it was, but I know that the casting process, like, took a while,

01:11and, like, somehow in there, I kind of found out I was trans. And I told them,

01:19and the writers were really cool about it, and they thought, like, oh,

01:22this might be a really good opportunity to, like, tell the story of a trans character.

01:28And so we talked about that and stuff, and that's just kind of what happened. And they

01:32were all, like, really cool about it, and everyone on set was really good with, like,

01:37pronouns and stuff. And then, you know, he changed his name to Ben, so it was kind of full circle.

01:42Yay, it's a boy. Mom.

01:53So am I.

01:58Anything they've done for him related to his transition felt really genuine and not, like,

02:05overdramatic or anything, and I am really proud of that. I feel so honored to be a part of a

02:13project that would let me do that, and the way that the scene, his coming out scene, turned out,

02:20I just felt like it was really powerful, because you see a lot of coming out scenes that end badly,

02:28and that does happen in real life, but I think it was so special to just see some mom who was

02:36really accepting, and it just meant a lot to me. And it was similar to my story, too,

02:44and my mom was really accepting as well. And so it was just very, it was really authentic for me to

02:52do that, and I felt like it's important to have representation where the characters are just

03:00accepted and it's okay. This is gonna sound, like, really cliche and dorky, but I didn't really know

03:13that I wanted to be an actor until I started working on Good Girls, because it was kind of,

03:18like, one of the first things I did, and I had done smaller things, but that was when I kind of,

03:24like, got a feel of it, and working more frequently, I just realized it was so much

03:30fun and so exciting to be on set, and yeah, that's when I knew I wanted to be an actor.

03:39I've been going out for a lot of cis boys, which I enjoy. I do really like playing queer roles,

03:46though, which there aren't a lot of, but occasionally I'll get some that come along.

03:56But there are definitely more cis guy roles, which I would be really happy to play,

04:01and I'm still kind of figuring out, like, what kind of roles I would like to play.

04:06There's slowly more representation and better representation, which is really important.

04:12Like, shows like Pose, it's really inspiring, especially to see trans women of color in, like,

04:19the lead roles and stuff. That's really inspiring for me. So I think Hollywood is changing, but

04:25there's a long way to go, and there's, you know, it has its moments that, you know,

04:32and there's, you know, it has its moments that, you know, there's a lot of work to be done.

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