Transgender actress Jamie Clayton sat down with NewNowNext to discuss the upcoming second season of Sense8, playing a trans character on television, and what's to come for our heroes.
Sense8 follows eight people across the globe who are suddenly granted the power of sensates, a hivemind that allows them to communicate with each other telepathically. As they discover their powers, they begin to be hunted by powerful force named BPO, and the sensates must work together to survive. Clayton plays the character of Nomi Marks, an ass-kicking transgender hacker living with her girlfriend in San Francisco.
Clayton, a transgender woman, has the unique opportunity to play a transgender character, and believes that Nomi and her girlfriend, Amanita, have the strongest relationship on the show. "Nomi has the most honest relationship in the series," she explains. "One of the reasons I wanted this project was I wanted to play a trans character whose story wasn’t about her being trans."
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How Sense8 dives into the personal lives of such wildly different people is part of the reason the show is so captivating, but not everyone thinks so. "Of all the negative comments we get, I’m always surprised how people are offended by the sex, but not the violence. Two people of the same gender, or people of different skin, sets them off. But the fighting and all that is fine. That says something is off in our culture."
Read the full interview here and stream season two of Sense8 on Netflix this Friday, May 5th.
