Transgender actress Laverne Cox will star in ABC’s new hour long comedy, “The Trustee.”
Cox, who first came to prominence in “Orange is the New Black” and was nominated for an Emmy in that show, was also on the legal drama “Doubt” but the show was taken off the air after two episodes.
Cox will play Amanda Jones in “The Trustee,” which Deadline reports is “a fun, female buddy cop comedy about Eliza Radley (Meaghan Rath), a driven but stubborn detective who finds unlikely help from her precinct’s trustee, Amanda Jones (Cox) a larger-than-life ex-con finishing out her prison sentence doing menial tasks for the police department.”
The show is being produced by Elizabeth Banks and Max Handelman’s studio-based Brownstone Producutions, Smurfs writers Jay Scherick and David Ronn, and Warner Bros.
Cox’s role in the new ABC show makes her the first Trans woman of color to have a leading role on a mainstream scripted television show.
