With 'Clean Slate,' Laverne Cox adds a new title to her résumé: Star and co-creator of her own show
Laverne Cox's new Prime Video comedy series, "Clean Slate," is loosely inspired by her own Alabama upbringing.
Laverne Cox is no stranger to blazing her own trail. In 2014, while playing prison inmate Sophia Burset on Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black,” Cox became the first transgender person to grace the cover of Time magazine and to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in any acting category. A year later, she won a Daytime Emmy Award for hosting and executive-producing “The T Word,” an MTV documentary about the lives of seven trans youths. In 2017, on the short-lived CBS legal drama “Doubt,” she became the first trans actor to play a trans character in a series regular role on broadcast television.
But with the new Prime Video family sitcom “Clean Slate,” which premieres Thursday, Cox now gets to add a new title to her illustrious résumé: star, co-creator and executive producer of her own show. The eight-episode series follows Desiree Slate, played by Cox, as she returns home to Mobile, Alabama, 23 years after she moved to New York as a teenager. She goes back to reconnect with her father, an old-school car wash owner named Harry — who, upon receiving an email from his estranged child, is shocked to discover that the son he expected to find on his doorstep is now a transgender woman.
For Cox, 52, the opportunity to headline her own show has been a dream over 20 years in the making. Seven years ago, Cox and her manager agreed to meet with writer-producer Dan Ewen, who pitched them the idea of a trans woman returning to her roots to mend fences with her father. Within a week of their four-hour meeting, Ewen had written a draft of the pilot script, which eventually found its way into the hands of Norman Lear, the heavyweight producer known for creating popular ’70s sitcoms such as “All in the Family,” “One Day at a Time,” and “The Jeffersons.”
After the idea languished in the development and pitching stages for a few years, Cox admitted that she was worried that networks and studios were not interested in buying trans stories. But in 2022, on Lear’s 100th birthday, Amazon formally ordered a full season of “Clean Slate.” (Lear died the following year.)
Much like Lear’s past sitcoms, “Clean Slate” attempts to tackle hot-button issues in an inclusive, accessible way, avoiding the tendency to hit viewers over the head with a clear message but instead opting to shed light on the everyday struggles of marginalized communities.
Rating: 5