This story originally appeared on Them.
Actor Asia Kate Dillon shared an urgent plea to find work in the service industry, saying that acting jobs have all but dried up for transgender and nonbinary talent in recent years.
Best known for their groundbreaking role as Taylor Mason on the Showtime drama Billions, Dillon became the first nonbinary main character in a North American television series in 2017. Though they had worked in food service since the time they were 15, Dillon wrote in a Tuesday Instagram post that they were able to pursue acting full-time a decade ago. Now, they are sharing their food service résumé online in the hopes of returning to their original industry.
“Like many, many performer colleagues of mine — particularly those of us who are trans/nonbinary/ gender nonconforming—- acting work has all but diminished, and I’m in need of service work once more,” they wrote in the October 20 post.
They continued, “I love customer service. I love creating welcoming environments for people to relax in and connect with each other. I love food and drinks. I am passionate and curious, and a great teammate. I imagine the hurdle to reentry will be learning the new POS [point of sale] systems, but I’m a quick study.”
Throughout the 2010s, following what Time magazine dubbed “The Transgender Tipping Point,” a crop of trans and nonbinary actors rose to notoriety. From Laverne Cox in Orange Is The New Black — a series in which Dillon themself had a small recurring role — to Elliot Fletcher’s role on Shameless and Trace Lysette’s arc on Transparent, trans representation hit the mainstream in an unprecedented way. That micro-boom arguably culminated in the FX series Pose, which advanced the careers of Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, and more.
Dillon themself represented the first time many nonbinary people saw themselves on screen, particularly as a character who used they/them pronouns on a major television network before they had entered cisgender lexicon. Despite these gains in trans representation on screen, there has been a sharp decline in work for trans and nonbinary performers over the last several years.
Several prominent actors from this “tipping point” period, including Cox, Lysette, and Dillon — as well as newer trans talent like Camp Miasma star Jack Haven — have reported a significant reduction in acting opportunities. In September, Haven posted a plea for $4,000 worth of acting work in order to retain access to Screen Actors Guild health insurance.
Even Elliot Page, who starred in summer blockbuster The Odyssey, said in September that he has not received calls with job offers following the box-office success of the Christopher Nolan epic. It is perhaps no surprise that this decline in work for trans and nonbinary actors coincides with a rise of anti-trans rhetoric from government officials and a tidal wave of laws attacking the community.
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