DOUBT: Laverne Cox to Co-Star in CBS series, Breaking Ground for Transgender Actors

Laverne Cox, star of Orange is the New Black and the upcoming remake of the Rocky Horror Picture Show (2016), is set to co-star in the new CBS new series Doubt, a legal drama by Grey’s Anatomy writers and producers Tony Phelan and Joan Rater. Cox is breaking

ground for transgenders actors and actress, becoming the first transgender actress to play a transgender character on a broadcast series. Katherine Heigl, Steven Pasquale, Dulé Hill, Dreama Walker, Elliott Gould, and Kobi Libii will also be starring in the series.

Doubt was originally piloted last season and didn’t go to series, but this year its second pilot was a network favorite. The storyline will follow a smart and successful lawyer Sadie Ellis (Heigl) who begins to fall for her client, who is being accused of a brutal crime. The series will be directed by Better Call Saul’s Adam Bernstein.

Cox gained national recognition on the Jenji Kohan’s critically acclaimed Netflix series Orange is the New Black in her role as Sophia Burset, a complex and compelling transgender woman behind bars for credit card fraud. Her character has brought attention to the issues trans women face both in and outside of the prison system- her complicated relationship with her now ex wife and son, her struggle to fit in with her fellow inmates and the discrimination she faces as both a black woman and trans woman. Cox will also be starring in the tv-movie remake of the Rocky Horror Picture Show as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the sexually open, fetish-clad, mad scientist originally played by Tim Curry.

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