Miss Benny, who stars alongside Kim Cattrall in the Netflix makeup-world comedy “Glamorous,” has come out as a transgender woman.
On Monday, the actress and former YouTube star penned an essay in Time magazine talking about her transition journey.
Miss Benny also shared her identity with fans on her Instagram, where she wrote she uses she/her pronouns. “thank u @time for letting me write about my transition for the first time 🦋,” the actress wrote.
“i am overwhelmed with hard-earned joy. happy pride 🤍,” she added.
The Netflix star, 24, is known for her appearances in “American Horror Story” and “Fuller House.” Miss Benny also had a YouTube channel like her “Glamorous” character, and first started her account at 11 years old.
In her Time essay, Miss Benny talked about how transitioning has impacted her life and the barriers that kept her from living authentically.
“I’m one of those girls who grew up in a religious Texas household where queerness was totally not the vibe,” she said. “But by 8 years old I was praying every night to wake up and somehow be like my sisters. In the morning I would wake up in the same body, and cry.”
“I moved to L.A. when I was 14 as a way to get out of Texas, establish my own identity, and, hopefully, make a career as an actor,” the actress wrote. “But I instead endured years of rejection in auditions because it ‘wasn’t time for someone like me.'”
Then at 19, Miss Benny got a phone call about starring in “Glamorous.”
At her first audition for the show, she said, “I arrived as a diet version of myself so as not to subject myself to the usual rejection I’d faced. But this time, I was met with the encouragement to be myself and let my full femininity shine.”
“This was the first time in my life somebody looked at me and said, ‘Yes, it’s time for you.'”
Eventually, the actress began the process of transitioning. “It felt as if I had lived with a stuffy nose my whole life and then suddenly my breathing airways opened, and I discovered everybody else has been breathing freely the whole time,” she said.
Miss Benny continued, “If someone like me is out there feeling the weight of being othered, I want them to have a place they can see someone like us thrive and be celebrated.”
“Glamorous” is now streaming on Netflix. In the show, the actress plays an aspiring YouTube beauty guru who gets a dream job working for makeup mogul Madolyn Addison (Kim Cattrall), and learns to navigate love, career ambitions and their gender identity.
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