00:00 Wait, so you have a gift for me?
00:02 Yes!
00:03 Well, you may have thought, I was like, you were at my birthday party, so you probably
00:05 already have it.
00:06 It's okay.
00:07 This is going to be the easiest unwrapping.
00:08 Wait, maybe not.
00:09 There is a Laverne Cox Barbie, she's sitting here.
00:15 Listen, I was, round of applause.
00:18 Now I can tell you as a, am I a hetero gay guy?
00:23 I like, what is my term?
00:24 What is it?
00:25 I don't even know.
00:26 Hetero gay, what?
00:27 What is it?
00:28 A straight gay, because I'm like really gay.
00:29 I don't know my pronoun.
00:30 I don't know my pronoun.
00:31 As a gay, I ain't never had no doll, but I'm not only going to say thank you for the doll,
00:37 we're actually going to, go ahead and bring that in.
00:39 We're actually going to, no, just come right over here.
00:43 We're going to put her right here.
00:46 So we have, yes, her hair should be styled.
00:52 Yes.
00:53 This is a first that I'm really proud of, that I'm the first trans person, openly trans
01:00 person to have a-
01:01 See, here we go, the first trans, see again.
01:02 To have a doll made in their image by Mattel.
01:05 I love that.
01:06 I love that.
01:07 And there's not an agenda.
01:09 This isn't an agenda.
01:10 There are trans folks, LGBTQ folks of all ages who are inspired by this and who need
01:18 to see this, you know?
01:20 And people who aren't, and what has also been so beautiful about my life and career is that
01:24 there are people who aren't LGBTQ plus or black or whatever, who were inspired because
01:29 I, nothing that has happened in my career is supposed, was supposed to happen.
01:34 Like there are all these black trans women being nominated for Emmys or on magazine covers.
01:41 No, like not before me.
01:42 So none of this was meant to be or was supposed to happen.
01:47 And so-
01:48 But the evolution of it and you being groundbreaking doesn't make it your fault, as they will say,
01:53 like you're on the cover of Time or you have the doll.
01:55 It's your agenda.
01:56 It's an agenda you're the face of.
01:58 People I think are connecting with your advocacy and your visibility and you're being blessed
02:03 because of the work that you put in.
02:04 I have a right and I have a right to live my dreams.
02:07 You know, we all have a, this is America and I, you know, as many problems as this country
02:12 has, I believe that everybody should be able to live their dreams here and be able to do
02:17 with our bodies and with our lives what we should be able to do and what we want to do.
02:23 And so the fact that I'm a black trans woman living my best life, genuinely happy, you
02:30 know, making a lovely living, being visible, people are inspired by it because it's like
02:36 this is not something that most of us grew up with.
02:39 You know, now there are kids growing up with it, which is wonderful.
02:42 And it's just, I think my story is a testament to like, you know, a lot of hard work, perseverance
02:47 and passion.
02:48 There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into everything I do.
02:51 And even if people think I suck at, people think I suck at acting or whatever, I do have
02:55 four Emmy nominations for acting.
03:01 Somebody doesn't think I suck.
03:02 And honestly, but to be real, I've seen performances of mine that suck.
03:06 I think some of my favorite actors have done terrible performances and that like inspires
03:11 me.
03:12 I'm like, and I'm not going to name any of them.
03:13 I'm like, some of my favorite actors, like, I'm like, that was not good.
03:16 And so, you know, hopefully I'll have a chance to do better next time.
03:21 And I think that like, as an artist, you have to take the risk to suck.
03:25 You have to take the risk to, you know, maybe not do well at something.
03:30 Because I think we often learn more from quote unquote failure or when things don't happen
03:35 the way that we'd like them to, then we learn from our successes.
03:37 But you watch your work back and criticize your own work?
03:39 Absolutely.
03:40 Because some people don't even watch themselves.
03:41 I mean, sometimes it's hard.
03:43 I mean, it depends on if it's really close to me, it's harder to watch.
03:46 And I may need to take a couple of years to watch.
03:48 I remember one of the second to last Emmy nomination I got, I couldn't even, like, I
03:54 remember watching, I watched the season right when it came out, this is for Orange is the
03:57 New Black.
03:58 And I thought it was too much and I hated it.
04:01 And I was like, oh, this sucks.
04:02 And I just was like, ugh.
04:03 And I talked to my acting teacher about it and she didn't agree.
04:07 And then like a year later, I get nominated for an Emmy for that work that I thought sucked.
04:11 And I was like, why?
04:14 I watched it back and I was like, okay, this is actually good.
04:16 But I needed a year to be able to kind of like be objective about it.
04:21 And I think I was like, oh, actually, this is pretty good.
04:24 But sometimes I think I suck, you know, and that's okay.
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