1. Vivian Yee, “To Hollywood, All Things Hip Lie in Brooklyn,” The New York Times, May 27, 2014, sec. New York, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/
nyregion/to-hollywood-all-things-hip-lie-in-brooklyn.html. [return to page 1]

2. Brian Michael Smith, “Who’s That Guy Arresting Girls’ Jessa??,” BuzzFeed Community, June 5, 2014, https://www.buzzfeed.com/smokeinthecity/whos-that-guy-arresting-girls-jessa-7be2.

3. “Brian Michael Smith,” in IMDb, accessed October 17, 2022, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4476887/.

4. It is important to emphasize that Michael Smith was not out professionally as an actor, but had professionally worked in LGBTQ spaces. Check out this article for a rare reflection from Michael Smith about his life before his acting career: “30 L.G.B.T.Q. Artists Look Back on the Pleasures and Pain of Being 30,” The New York Times, June 27, 2024, sec. T Magazine, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/27/t-magazine/lgbtq-queer-artists-pride.html.

5. Katy Steinmetz, “The Transgender Tipping Point,” Time, May 29, 2014, https://time.com/135480/transgender-tipping-point/.

6. Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen, Documentary (Netflix, Disclosure Films, Bow and Arrow Entertainment, Field of Vision (II), 2020).

7. Traci B. Abbott, The History of Trans Representation in American Television and Film Genres (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 168.

8.. Cáel M. Keegan, “On the Necessity of Bad Trans Objects,” Film Quarterly 75, no. 3 (March 1, 2022): 27, https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.75.3.26.

9. Laurena Bernabo, “Copaganda and Post-Floyd TVPD: Broadcast Television’s Response to Policing in 2020,” Journal of Communication 72, no. 4 (August 3, 2022): 488–96, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqac019.

10. Color of Change and the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center, “Normalizing Injustice: The Dangerous Misrepresentations That Define Television’s Scripted Crime Genre,” January 2020, https://hollywood.colorofchange.org/crime-tv-report/; Jonathan Nichols-Pethick, TV Cops: The Contemporary American Television Police Drama (Florence, UNITED STATES: Taylor & Francis Group, 2012); Elayne Rapping, Law and Justice as Seen on TV (New York: New York University Press, 2003); Jason Mittell, “Policing Genres: Dragnet’s Texts and Generic Contexts,” in Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture (New York: Routledge, 2004).

11. Throughout this article, I will be using the term “color-evasive” instead of “colorblind” to refer to the incorrect idea that race should be ignored in order to create equality for individuals or groups. I am inspired by Subini Ancy Annamma, Darrell D. Jackson, and Deb Morrison's article titled “Conceptualizing Color-Evasiveness: Using Dis/Ability Critical Race Theory to Expand a Color-Blind Racial Ideology in Education and Society,” in which they discuss how “color-evasive” emerges out of a Dis/ability Critical Race Theory framework. Subini Ancy Annamma, Darrell D. Jackson, and Deb Morrison, “Conceptualizing Color-Evasiveness: Using Dis/Ability Critical Race Theory to Expand a Color-Blind Racial Ideology in Education and Society,” Race Ethnicity and Education 20, no. 2 (March 4, 2017): 147–62, https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2016.124883711..

12. Maureen Ryan, Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, And A Call For Change In Hollywood, 2023.

13. Ryan.

14. Brian Michael Smith, “Queen Sugar” Actor Brian Michael Smith Comes Out as Transgender, interview by Tiq Milan, NBC News, July 16, 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/queen-sugar-actor-brian-michael-smith-comes-out-transgender-n783451; Brian Michael Smith, Thank you for opening your Heart and Soul to us. Your Story and Journey is incredibly crucial to the Growth and Evolution of the Human Race. You’re truly a Beacon of Hope and Inspiration for the Future Generations. I’m honored to call you a Cast Mate and Friend. #BlackTransLivesMatter #BlackLivesMatter #PrideMonth, interview by Ronen Rubinstein, Instagram Live, June 13, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/tv/CBYtacIAzcP/.

15. Brian Michael Smith, GLAAD talks to Brian Michael from OWN’s Queen Sugar, interview by Nick Adams, GLAAD, July 10, 2017, https://www.glaad.org/blog/glaad-talks-brian-michael-owns-queen-sugar.

16. Michael Smith, “Queen Sugar” Actor Brian Michael Smith Comes Out as Transgender.

17. Michael Smith, GLAAD talks to Brian Michael from OWN’s Queen Sugar.

18. GLAAD, “2014 Where We Are on TV Report,” September 30, 2014, https://glaad.org/publications/whereweareontv14/. [return to page 2]

19. Oliver Haug, “Transmasculine Actors Are Still Waiting for Their ‘Tipping Point,’” Vice, June 17, 2022, https://www.vice.com/en/article/4axynb/transmasculine-representation-television.

20. Zeke Smith, “‘Survivor’ Contestant Opens Up About Being Outed as Transgender (Guest
Column),” The Hollywood Reporter (blog), April 12, 2017, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/survivor-zeke-smith-outed-as-transgender-guest-column-991514/; Zeke Smith, “‘Survivor’s’ Zeke Smith: Why Being Vulnerable Was Worth the Risk (Guest Column),” The Hollywood Reporter (blog), May 3, 2017, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/survivor-zeke-smith-journey-being-outed-guest-column-999524/.

21. “Chaz Bono,” in IMDb, accessed March 1, 2024, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0095106/.

22. “Thomas Beatie,” in IMDb, accessed February 27, 2024,
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2976126/.

23. Joshua Gamson, Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (The University of Chicago Press, 1999), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.05927.

24. Kristen J Warner, The Cultural Politics of Colorblind TV Casting, 2018.

25. Warner, 41.

26. Michael Smith, “Who’s That Guy Arresting Girls’ Jessa?

27. Michael Smith.

28. Color of Change and the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center, “Normalizing Injustice: The Dangerous Misrepresentations That Define Television’s Scripted Crime Genre.”

29. Nadine Matthews, “Brian Michael on Breaking Barriers for Trans Male Actors and His ‘Queen Sugar’ Role,” Shadow and Act, October 9, 2017, https://shadowandact.com/interview-brian-michael-on-breaking-barriers-for-trans-male-actors-and-his-queen-sugar-role.

30. Warner, The Cultural Politics of Colorblind TV Casting, 157.

31. Michael Smith, “Queen Sugar” Actor Brian Michael Smith Comes Out as Transgender.

32. Michael Smith.

33. Michael Smith, GLAAD talks to Brian Michael from OWN’s Queen Sugar.

34. Disclosure.

35. Haug, “Transmasculine Actors Are Still Waiting for Their ‘Tipping Point.’”

36. Nico Lang, “How Trans Actors Are Rewriting the Rules of TV Casting,” The New York Times, May 3, 2019, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/arts/television/transgender-actors-tv-casting.html.

37. Michael Smith, GLAAD talks to Brian Michael from OWN’s Queen Sugar; Michael Smith, “Queen Sugar” Actor Brian Michael Smith Comes Out as Transgender.

38. Michael Smith, GLAAD talks to Brian Michael from OWN’s Queen Sugar.

39. “Sandra Caldwell,” in IMDb, accessed March 1, 2024, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0129783/.

40. Sophie Haigney, “To Play Transgender, Sandra Caldwell Had to Open Up About Who She Is,” The New York Times, August 28, 2017, sec. Theater, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/theater/to-play-transgender-sandra-caldwel
l-had-to-open-up-about-who-she-is.html.

41. Michael Smith, GLAAD talks to Brian Michael from OWN’s Queen Sugar. [return to page 3]

42. “Caroling Dusk,” Queen Sugar, July 12, 2017.

43. “Caroling Dusk,” 32:56-33:02.

44. “Caroling Dusk,” 33:06-33:49.

45. “Caroling Dusk,” 33:54-34:12.

46. Keegan, “On the Necessity of Bad Trans Objects,” 27.

47. Michael Smith, “Queen Sugar” Actor Brian Michael Smith Comes Out as Transgender; Ralph Angel Reconnects with a Transgender Man He Once Protected | Queen Sugar | OWN, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PInM19iWjCY.

48. Keegan, “On the Necessity of Bad Trans Objects,” 27.

49. Jade D. Petermon and Leland G. Spencer, “Black Queer Womanhood Matters: Searching for the Queer Herstory of Black Lives Matter in Television Dramas,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 36, no. 4 (August 8, 2019): 339–56, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2019.1607518.

50. Petermon and Spencer, 350. Petermon and Spencer offer a cutting take on Black Lives Matter and Queen Sugar: “Despite introducing tremendous complexity in presenting the problem [of anti-Blackness and the prison-industrial complex], QS [Queen Sugar] puts the solution in the hands of a single White cop who activates an old boy network to drop the trumped-up charges against one of the hundreds of Black people wrongly imprisoned in New Orleans. For his effort, White Savior Calvin even gets rewarded, with his relationship with Nova restored.”

53. Alfred L. Martin, The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2021), 16–17.

52. “Here Beside the River,” Queen Sugar, August 1, 2018.

53. “Ava DuVernay to Be Honored with the Excellence in Media Award for Intersectional Advocac5 at 29th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in New York,” April 20, 2018, https://www.glaad.org/releases/ava-duvernay-be-honored-excellence
-media-award-intersectional-advocacy-29th-annual-glaad.

54. “Pleasure Is Black,” Queen Sugar, June 12, 2019.

55. “Spaces Fill,” Queen Sugar, September 27, 2022.

56. Michael Smith, “Queen Sugar” Actor Brian Michael Smith Comes Out as Transgender.