Beauty & The Beach

From Malibu to Manhattan, Laverne Cox is having a moment wherever she goes.

- David Hochman

Laverne Cox is making a gratitude list. She arrived early to Soho House, the swank private club on Sunset Boulevard that is a sort of petting zoo for starlets and studio heads, and she needs another minute to complete this daily ritual assigned by her acting coach. Cox’s mirrored platinum fingernails look like bullets against her smartphone as she taps out today’s joys and delights: The panoramic view of Los Angeles; the woman in the ladies’ room who just said “you’re an inspiration”; the chance to discuss how she made history as the first transgender performer to play a transgender character in a series regular role on broadcast TV.

On the legal drama Doubt, Cox is Cameron Wirth, a trans Yale-educated attorney at a boutique law firm who is as compassionate as she is driven. What’s unusual about the part is how little drama there is around Cameron’s gender. “She’s trans but that’s not all she is,” says Cox, who co-stars opposite Katherine Heigl, Elliott Gould and Dulé Hill. “You observe her in the courtroom, you see her hanging with her co-workers, you see her flirting with guys. There’s one line in the pilot where we addressed Cameron’s gender, but then we moved right on to her working as a lawyer.”

Cox, 32, was the first openly transgender actor to be nominated for an Emmy, in 2014, for Orange Is the New Black. That same year, she appeared on the cover of Time alongside the words “America’s Next Civil Rights Frontier.” But as she puts her phone on silent and flips a hand through her long, jet-black hair, Cox makes it clear that her greatest breakthroughs are still to come, thank you very much.

Your life certainly has changed in these past few years. How do you maintain balance?