Photo: Brooke Palmer/CBS
As a trans actor working in Hollywood,Jen Richardscontinues to advocate for representation of the community in entertainment.
The Emmy Award nominee, 45, will kick off a three-episode arc on CBS’Claricethis week as Julia Lawson, an informant helping the titular Clarice Starling (Rebecca Breeds) get behind the truth of a far-reaching conspiracy. In doing so, Julia has to confront her own truth.
With the storyline, the series will attempt to reconcile with the problematic history of the Buffalo Bill character fromThe Silence of the Lambs.
“When it came to actually filmingClarice, it felt more hopeful,” Richards tells PEOPLE.
Brooke Palmer/CBS
Richards previously discussed the 1991 Academy Award-winning film’s harmful effect on the trans community in the 2020 Netflix documentaryDisclosure. She says it was “cathartic” opening up then about her own experience transitioning, recalling the moment a coworker casually compared her to Buffalo Bill (a.k.a. James Gumb), the movie’s controversial killer.
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Richards' character confronts Clarice on Thursday’s episode, addressing the FBI agent’s complicity in linking “the relationship between being trans and being a psychotic killer, not to put too fine a point on it,” after she caught Buffalo Bill in the preceding film’s final moments.
“It’s a way of acknowledging that in order to move forward,” Richards says. “And [to] show a character who is fully formed and three-dimensional, and has love in her life, and has friends, and has a profession, and has a whole story arc.”
The writer/actress was originally brought on to consult on the episode before being ultimately cast in the part. She credits trans writer Eleanor Jean with conceiving the role and her powerful monologue. “That’s a lot of pressure,” Richards notes.
“You know, in the space of a monologue, [to] acknowledge the pain … but grounded in an actual character and her lived experience, and to have her level that against Clarice in a way that acknowledged Clarice’s complicity without blaming her,” she continues. “It’s actually a very sophisticated monologue, and there’s a real tight rope in how to do that.”
She also enjoyed working with director Deborah Kampmeier, who had Richards do one take with improvised lines about how the movie affected her personally before performing her monologue.
“So I came into it without the personal emotion, and that got infused into the lines,” Richards says. “And I think most of what you see on screen is actually from that second take. So that was really smart of Deb — she’s a great director.”
“You know, she doesn’t want anyone to look too closely — just keep my head down, do my job, try not to get noticed,” she adds. “And then I have this separate life at home, that’s full of love and friendship, and its own kind of struggles and care.”
See Richards on this week’s episode ofClarice, airing Thursday at 10 p.m. ET on CBS.
source: people.com
