Smith did not believe he could launch his television career successfully as an out trans man, and even if he had wanted to be out, it may not have been possible. To have a public discussion around his transness, he would have needed a high-profile career, like Elliot Page, or at least a regular role, like Laverne Cox in Orange is the New Black. In the year that Smith appeared on Girls, GLAAD’s “2014 Where We Are On TV Report” tracked the number of transmasculine and Black LGBT characters on television in the 2014 -2015 season According to the report, there were only 17 Black LGBTQ characters on broadcast and cable and only 1 transmasculine character on television that season.[18][open notes in new window] In terms of Black trans actors, Cox was one of the only Black trans women on television in a scripted role during this season.

Yet, it would not only have been difficult for Smith to find work if he were out as trans, but even if he were out, Hollywood could have been a rough terrain to navigate. As Oliver Haug points out in an article about transmasculine actors: “it’s an unfortunate truth that when trans men and transmasculine actors do get hired, they’re often the only trans person on set” and must do their own advocacy sometimes for themselves or for their character.[19] Surely not having to explain himself as trans to cis industry professionals, let alone endure potential media publicity and the limitations to the very few (if any) transmasculine roles made strategic sense for an actor already braving low-wages, work precarity, and breaking into Hollywood.

As Smith came out later in 2017, I have to wonder what would have happened to his career if he had been involuntarily outed. While this did not happen, such a possibility exposes the industrial constraints for people in the media and it points to the need to understand the media careers of the few trans men who have appeared on television. In fact, just months before Smith would come out via his character on Queen Sugar, Survivor contestant Zeke Smith, a white trans man, was outed by a fellow contestant during his second season on the show. Zeke Smith had the support of executive producer and host Jeff Probst and worked with GLAAD’s Nick Adams to craft his first public statement via a guest column for the Hollywood Reporter.[20] As a Black actor with no industry giants to back him up, would Smith have been afforded the same opportunities to keep his acting dream alive?

It is likely that Smith could have maintained some type of television career if he were outed, but most likely not as an actor. For example, in 2009 Chaz Bono, the son of Cher and Sonny Bono, came out as trans. Bono then appeared in an OWN Documentary and later that year competed on Dancing with the Stars.[21] In another instance, Thomas Beatie, an Asian American trans man, gained widespread attention in 2007 for his pregnancies. He appeared on various television programs, most notably The Oprah Winfrey Show, 20/20, and even Secret Story, the French adaptation of Big Brother.[22] Smith might have been able to enter this talk and reality show circuit, like Bono, Beatie, and the many trans people on television shows before him as Joshua Gamson details in his book Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity.[23] Yet he wanted to be an actor, not just a celebrity or a trans advocate. Being out as trans, regardless of whether Smith wanted to be or not, was impractical for his dreams of having an acting career in Hollywood.

Notably, Smith was facing another challenge in Hollywood: seeking work as a Black actor. Although he has not publicly discussed his personal experiences in dealing with racism, Kristen Warner’s The Cultural Politics of Colorblind TV Casting provides insight into how he might have experienced securing work.[24] Warner discusses the color-evasive racism that Black and Brown actors face while auditioning and attempting to secure roles. This particularly comes to a head when Smith and other Black actors are told by industry professionals, particularly casting directors, that they do not have the “the right look."[25] While the casting directors, for example, claim that race does not matter, this “right look” as Warner explains, ultimately means selecting white actors or actors who are most appealing through a lens of whiteness. As a shorter, bald Black man, Smith was surely not cast in a variety of roles due to racism, regardless of the strength of his acting skills.

How’s a Black stealth transmasculine actor going to find work in Hollywood? As Smith tells the story in 2014, the idea for him to play police officers in order to find work was suggested to him like this:

“I met a guy onset early on when I was doing background work and he told me ‘get a cop costume, and you'll always get work.’ And he was right! So many productions out here need cops and if you have the costume you're in there like swimwear. So I started doing background work as a cop on the shows I loved, like Law & Order: SVU.”[26]

Smith saw an opportunity to find regular work through playing police officers and on shows that centered on police activities. In television, there are plenty of police roles and policing shows looking to hire actors. Obviously, these shows have more than just police officers as characters, they also have attorneys, detectives, vigilantes, criminals, and victims. Perhaps, being a police officer is the most practical choice: there simply are more police officer roles than, say lawyer roles, across television genres. In 2014, Smith even stated another reason why he chose to play a cop:

“I figured I'd go the complete opposite of the stereotype; instead of being cast as the thug I decided to get in the way of the cop."[27]

I question my own reading of Smith’s tone in this comment. He could be remarking on the stakes of binary good/bad representation and/or he could be joking, as he goes on to clarify that he does think he can find more work as a police officer. If we imagine that Smith is serious, it is tempting to offer a flattening critique of Black respectability politics in his decision to play a cop. However, such a critique would ignore the industrial connection between policing and television, especially police drama, which already constructs a binary view of morality. On television, you are good or bad, a cop or criminal, but cops get more work.[28]

What is particularly striking is that Smith experienced career milestones around 2014 and 2019, close to two significant years in the Black Lives Matter movement. 2014, just one year after the movement began, was when Smith began his television career and in 2019, one year before the global coronavirus pandemic and another resurgence of Black Lives Matter, he was cast in his first regular role in Lonestar: 9-1-1. Both of these political moments in the United States forced into public discourse discussions about anti-Black violence at the hands of the police. In a 2017 article for Shadow and Act, as writer Nadine Mattews engages Smith on his interest in playing cops, he speaks directly to the issue of police violence:

“I learn from what I play. There’s a lot of things that happen within the cop community that I don’t understand. Why the blue wall of silence? A lot of what motivates police action is safety and the perception of what is a threat. And sometimes those perceptions are based on faulty ideas but at the end of the day, that’s what it is. That’s why they have such a hard time with people not understanding.”[29]

Smith’s sympathy towards the police rather than towards those harmed by the prison industrial complex reflects his prioritizing his acting career, which relies on his ability to play and be cast as a police officer. Smith’s statements are also part of a larger phenomenon that Warner analyzes among Black actors working in Hollywood’s acolor-evasive industry. As Warner details TV’s economic realities,

“when these actors [of color] do earn parts, they will most likely not be trying to establish some accurate or realistic portrayal of their cultural specificity but will not create waves so as to be considered eligible for subsequent hiring."[30]

In interview quoted above, Smith refuses to engage in what it might mean for him to want to play a Black (and sometimes trans) police officer. By not denying or challenging policing, Smith ensures he is eligible to play police officer roles, the bread and butter of his acting career. While police roles and police-centered content did help him launch a successful television career, the professional trade-off was that he could not challenge the very nature of policing and the prison industrial complex if he wanted to.

For me, this review of his career poses a key question: Would Smith, one of the only two Black trans men consistently working on television, still have a television career if he did not play a police officer and secure roles in police-centered content? The consistency of police content in the television industry allowed Smith to strategically find work amidst transphobia and racism. What is especially clear, however, is that Smith’s decision to market himself as a Black man police officer shaped an important moment in his career: coming out publicly via a trans police officer on Queen Sugar.

“This is definitely the time.” Smith comes out.

 “Actor Brian Michael Smith, who used this character as his vehicle to come out as transgender, has been acting professionally for the last five years and hadn’t disclosed his gender identity until this moment,” wrote Tiq Milan in his preface to Smith’s coming-out interview on NBC News’s website.[31] The interview was published the same week after Smith’s debut in the season 2 episode 5 episode of Queen Sugar titled “Caroling Dusk." The character I discuss here is police officer Toine Wilkins, who appears in two scenes in this episode. I previously discussed how Smith mobilized already existing police content to build a career, but in the next two sections, I gesture towards understanding how media and television’s changing landscape of trans representation has incorporated trans actors and trans characters into its already existing industrial logics. While Smith’s appearance as Toine is brief, his appearance on Queen Sugar represents a pivotal moment in his career as it marks his personal and professional convergence as an actor specializing in police officer roles and as a Black trans man. Here, I provide context for Smith’s decision to come out.

After securing work as a stealth professional actor, Smith came out in 2017. Why? While the transgender tipping point failed to secure an improvement in the material and political conditions of trans livelihoods, it did see more trans actors, writers, and creatives finding work. Smith spoke with interviewer Tiq Milan, a Black trans man writer and media consultant who also gained notoriety during the trans tipping point. Smith said,

“Because of the work that you’ve [Milan has] been doing and Laverne Cox and GLAAD have been doing, there are more roles that have trans people in them that are better written and rooted in authenticity. This is definitely the time."[32]

Here, Smith’s evocation of “time” marks the boom in trans representation and discourse, but in particular, indicates the greater number of roles being written for trans characters to be played by trans actors. As Smith told GLAAD: “in the past five years, there has been a huge shift in mainstream film and TV writing” that created more trans roles.[33] He then named a variety of trans creatives, writers, and advocates who were a part of this boom of trans creatives in Hollywood. Alongside Milan and Cox, other trans creative included Janet Mock, Jen Richards, and Jill Soloway and as well as those outside Hollywood, such independent web series Her Story created by Jen Richards who starred alongside Angelica Ross and Brothers created, directed, and produced by Emmett Jack Lundberg. In fact, Smith appears alongside many of these creatives and actors in the independent documentary film Disclosure, which marks the transition of trans representation in media during the transgender tipping point and frames him as a member of this trans Hollywood cohort.[14] Smith felt that with more trans writers being hired, there would be opportunities for him to act in trans roles.

However, despite the increase in roles for trans actors, this did not translate into significant opportunities for transmasculine actors. In a 2022 VICE article, “Transmasculine Actors Are Still Waiting for Their ‘Tipping Point,’” Oliver Haug spoke to several transmasculine actors including Scott Turner Schofield, D’Lo, Chella Man, and Marquise Vilsón. Haug writes,

“the opportunities they [transmasculine actors] are afforded are sorely lacking. And when it comes to roles that show their full humanity instead of relying on sensationalism or Trans 101 narratives, the field is pretty barren."[35]

In 2019, Brian Michael Smith echoed these concerns, highlighting both the scarcity of transmasculine roles and the nature of the roles that were available. He told The New York Times,

“Of the few roles for trans characters that are out there, most of them have focused on trans feminine narratives… Of the very few trans masculine roles that are out there, they’re mostly white and young.”[36]

Smith shared this in the context of how and why he still sought work playing cisgender roles even after coming out on Queen Sugar; in fact, he soon appeared on Chicago P.D. as a police witness and on Homeland as an EMT. While coming out did position Smith among trans creatives working in Hollywood at this time and allowed him to play trans characters, coming out did not guarantee him more work. He then was clear that he wanted to come out via playing a trans character on screen—perhaps, as a litmus test of his ability to score a trans role.[37]

Yet if coming out did not promote his professional success or advancement, it was something else: a meaningful milestone in Smith’s life. He shared a little of his own process in preparing to come out publicly with GLAAD:

“As I kept working [as an actor], learning about myself, and resolving issues I would uncover in therapy, I became more comfortable with bringing my more challenging life experiences into my work, and I wanted to start exploring my trans experiences. I went looking for roles that would allow me to ‘paint’ with parts of myself that I wasn't comfortable digging into or working with.’[38]

I interpret Brian Michael Smith's comments here as an explanation of how he emotionally prepared to perform the role of a trans character, especially in taking on acting roles that might overlap with parts of his personal experiences. Actress Sandra Caldwell’s coming out experience has resonances with Smith’s. While Caldwell was in her 60s and had been in film, television, and stage acting for around 30 years, like Smith, she was not professionally out as trans; she then chose to come out via playing a trans character through a stage production titled “Charm."[39] On sharing her story for the first time with The New York Times, Caldwell commented that she was not sure how her coming out would be received:

"I don't know what it's going to be like… But I kind of want to live the rest of what I've got on this planet as if there's such a thing as complete freedom. I want to live in that."[40]

Like Caldwell, Smith had to prepare himself for the personal experience of coming out professionally and had to figure out how to present such a personal and private part of his life in a professional setting. Coming out was no easy decision for him and playing the role of Toine Wilkins on Queen Sugar was a major personal and professional moment within his acting career. In the following section, I will situate this coming-out scene in Queen Sugar in the context of his recurring television roles as a police officer.

Leo Sheng as Michael Lee on The L Word: Generation Q (2019-2023).	Chella Man, a deaf trans and Asian American actor, as Jericho on DC Universe's Titans (2018-2023).