This profile is part of Queerty’s 2023 Out For Good series, recognizing public figures who’ve had the courage to come out and make a difference in the past year.
Name: Miss Benny, 24.
Bio: Miss Benny is an actress and singer/songwriter, most known for her breakout role in Netflix’s Glamorous, which premiered in June 2023.
Long before gracing our television screens, Miss Benny rose to fame on YouTube, where she documented her life as a closeted teen living in Denton, Texas. Through these videos – which clocked millions of views – she was able to find community, making friends with fellow queer icons Troye Sivan and Tyler Oakley.
In 2018, Benny was cast in Fuller House as Casey, the show’s first openly gay character. Her work on the show resulted in a GLAAD Media Award nomination… and enough scalding hot tea to last us a lifetime. We wouldn’t have it any other way!
@ihatemissbenny i’ve lived 1,000 lives #fullerhouse #americanhorrorstory #lovevictor #glamorous @Netflix #fyp ♬ Love You So – The King Khan & BBQ Show
It wasn’t until Pride Month 2023 that Miss Benny’s fame catapulted even further with the premiere of Glamorous, Netflix’s delightful LGBTQ romcom, where she played a bright-eyed go-getter at a makeup empire run by a model-turned-mogul played by Kim Cattrall.
But even more glamorous than the show was the news Miss Benny shared just days after it premiered.
Coming Out: In a personal essay written for Time, published four days after the premiere of Glamourous, Miss Benny came out as trans.
“The gap is quickly closing between now and June 22: the day that my television series Glamorous will come out on Netflix,” she wrote. “And along with it, I too will come out as the transgender woman I’ve been privately living as for the last few years.”
thank u @TIME for letting me write about my transition for the first time. 🦋 my pronouns are she/her. i am overwhelmed with hard-earned joy. happy pride ♥︎https://t.co/uVmYdhYLbg pic.twitter.com/1jpbGknphE
— miss benny (@MissBenny) June 26, 2023
In the essay, Benny mentioned how she was partially inspired to come out after watching HBO’s Veneno, a television series chronicling the life of a Spanish trans woman named Cristina Ortiz, who shot to fame in the mid-90s when she was interviewed by a TV journalist.
“There’s a scene in the series where the main character, a young queer person, meets their icon, an elder transgender woman who goes by the stage name La Veneno. The young queer person gets to ask her, ‘When did you start transitioning?’ And Veneno answers and turns to her admirer to ask, ‘And when will you start?’” Benny says.
“It was a punch to the gut. Because I knew that if somebody asked me that question, I would become painfully aware of how much time I felt I had wasted by not transitioning sooner.”
Shortly after realizing her true self, the actress met with Glamorous’ series creator, Jordan Nardino, and suggested they tweak the premise of the show to fit her identity.
“I met him at a bar in Silver Lake, and I told him about my transition,” she wrote. “I knew this was different from the original plan, but I felt we could include this journey in the show by having Marco transition alongside my transition in real life.”
Netflix and the show’s writers agreed to the idea, and the series was reset to reflect Miss Benny’s own journey.
“It was really important that Marco’s trans-ness was not the plot of the show,” she noted. “It’s not a ‘twist’ to surprise the audience. Instead, we get to watch a young queer person experiencing first love and heartbreak, career success and failure, and everything else that comes with being a young adult… while also discovering their identity in the background of life. Because being transgender is not something you do, it’s who you are.”
@ihatemissbenny 🥹🤍 #trans #transgender ♬ original sound – Miss Benny
Following her coming out in Time, Miss Benny reflected on the experience in an interview with Elite Daily.
“I didn’t know how I was going to feel going into it,” Miss Benny said, when asked about her feelings the day the Time article was published. “I kind of prepared for anything. I was prepared to be overwhelmed, to be stressed, to feel all kinds of negative emotions. But I actually ended up feeling this huge sense of relief.
I think that because I had spent a couple of years privately transitioning and sort of working through a lot of the initial feelings that anybody might have toward transitioning and all of that, I was able to not have to worry about those things as much…And so when the Time article came out, it was like sink or swim. No matter how people feel about this, I don’t have to think about it the same way. I can just let it be.
Up to this point, I’ve been a public person for a lot of my life, but I hadn’t really found a lot of spaces to be super vulnerable, partially out of protection for myself. So to do something like this required a lot of bravery that I had to muster up, and I couldn’t be happier with the response.”
From YouTuber to the trans lead of a major Netflix show, we couldn’t be happier for Miss Benny!
@ihatemissbenny 🏳️⚧️💗 @FLYANABOSS #glamorous ♬ You Wish – Flyana Boss
@ihatemissbenny not my neck breaking at the end omg 😭 #greenscreenvideo #glamorous #glamorousnetflix #kimcattrall #sexandthecity #andjustlikethat ♬ Yacht Club – MusicBox
dbmcvey
Another reason for Shaver to whine.
dbmcvey
And unsurprisingly, London is triggered.
dbmcvey
There are already 3 anti- trans commenters here reacting pretty much as expected.