This story originally appeared on Them.
Transgender actor Maikol Roque’s first film credit is also a major milestone for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Roque is currently making his big-screen debut in the box-office sensation Spider-Man: Brand New Day as EJ, the son of detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas). The film has already taken in $360 million domestically during its opening weekend and crossed the $1 billion dollar mark in just six days making it the second-fastest film to ever do so, per Variety. Which means you can place Roque right alongside Elliot Page in the pantheon of trans actors in major blockbusters who are currently major thorns in the side of the “go woke, go broke” crowd.
In a TikTok post this past weekend, Roque wrote: “plan A: get cast in a marvel movie, become the first POC transgender character in the MCU, have the coolest screen family ever” with a second slide saying “there was no plan B” in all caps. In the comments, fans of the superhero sequel gushed about what it meant to see a trans actor in a major event movie like this one. One person even joked, “I knew I sensed some tboy swag in your character.”
While Roque is among an incredibly small cohort of trans actors to have been cast by Marvel, there have been other trans actors of color in MCU projects, as he himself acknowledged in the comments section of his TikTok. The MCU series Jessica Jones, for example, featured Indian American actress Aneesh Sheth as the titular character’s assistant. The Spider-Man film Far From Home featured Zach Barack, a white trans actor, as one of Peter Parker’s classmates. Most accurately, then, Roque appears to be the first out trans person of color to appear in an MCU film.
But the specifics of the precedent aside, it’s incredible to see yet another box-office buster this summer defy the transphobes who think anyone cares about the specific gender identities of actors in great movies. Ahead of the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, many on the right predicted the film would be a flop because of Page’s role in the film; as it turns out, the film has netted over $900 million globally so far — and Page’s performance has been largely well-regarded by critics. Variety’s Marlow Stern observed that Page knocks his most pivotal scene “out of the park, haunting both hero and audience.”
And now Spider-Man: Brand New Day is breaking record after record. Just listen to this list of (partial) precedents via Deadline: the highest U.S. opening weekend ever, the best domestic Friday ever, and the second biggest global opening ever. All with a trans actor featured in the film.
Hmm, I guess LGBTQ+ talent isn’t quite the financial death knell the right seems to think it is. They’ll keep crying about it, while Spider-Man keeps swinging to even greater heights.
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