In 2014, Laverne Cox made history as the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Time magazine under the headline “The Transgender Tipping Point.” The accompanying story, written by Katy Steinmetz, positioned the fight for trans rights as the next big civil rights movement “poised to challenge long-held cultural norms and beliefs.” It’s easy to see why Steinmetz thought so. Cox’s show “Orange Is the New Black” had become Netflix’s most-watched original series ever; Amazon Studios’ “Transparent” had launched to critical raves; and Jared Leto won an Oscar for his portrayal of a trans sex worker with HIV in “Dallas Buyers Club.” The following year, Caitlyn Jenner would grace the cover of Vogue and take home ESPN’s Arthur Ashe Courage Award. Republican politicians and pundits began zeroing in on trans rights, treating it as a wedge issue in order to distract from Trump’s economic failings.
Just last year, more than 600 anti-trans bills were introduced at the state level in the U.S., and 29 states adopted restrictive laws pertaining to trans people. And Hollywood followed suit, scaling back its trans representation. Cox recently shared she’d lost 90% of her income amid Trump and his minions’ war on trans people and DEI.
This sea change has even affected Lilly Wachowski. Wachowski is — along with her sister, Lana — the most powerful and influential trans filmmaker around. The 58-year-old had gifted us “The Matrix” series, “Bound” and “Sensse8,” to name a few, and yet, after her critically acclaimed series “Work in Progress,” about a middle-aged lesbian who begins dating a much younger trans man, was canceled by Showtime after two seasons, she spent years pitching “cool and queer trans stories” to Hollywood but couldn’t find a single taker.
So, Wachowski took matters into her own hands, joining forces with Bay Area film programmer Sarah Marie Flores and producer Lawrence Mattis to form Anarchists United Foundation and Anarchists United Studio with the mission of championing stories from marginalized communities. Here’s how it works: The foundation provides grants and fellowships to aspiring filmmakers, mentorships via its Directors Prep & Pitch Lab and office space courtesy of United Spaces of Anarchy, while helping fund the studio. Anarchists United’s first project is “Cassie Workman Is Witchy AF,” a DIY docuseries that features the trans Aussie comic exploring the history of the occultism and magic with her trademark wit.
It will debut Sept. 16 on YouTube. In a candid interview, Wachowski spoke with Variety about her new studio, trans rights and a whole lot more. The story is: I was talking to Sarah Marie Flores, who is our third in the triumvirate of the Anarchists — between me and Lawrence Mattis — and was coming out of this TV show that I’d worked on that I was really proud of, “Work in Progress,” which went for two seasons, got on all these top ten lists and didn’t get the viewing numbers that the studio wanted, so we were summarily canceled and a few months later pulled from streaming.
There was something particularly special about working on “Work in Progress” to me: It was the first time I was able to cast as many trans and queer people as I did, and in all of that representation and seeing all these people onscreen who I’d never gotten to see before, I was like, This is something that makes sticking around in the business worthwhile. So, when Showtime turned around and canceled the show even though it was so critically acclaimed and really made for peanuts, it lit a fire under me. I saw all these windows closing and opportunities dwindling for marginalized voices, and I was like, “Somebody needs to do something about this.
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