Janet Mock has signed on with Netflix for a three-year multimillion-dollar pact that "gives the streaming giant exclusive rights to her TV series and a first-look option on feature film projects."
She is the first openly transgender person to ink a major TV contract.
"As someone who grew up in front of the TV screen, whether that was watching talk shows or family sitcoms or VHS films, I never thought that I would be embraced," Mock told Variety. "And more than embraced. Given not just a seat at the table but a table of my own making."
Mock hopes that the deal “will be a huge signal boost, industrywide, to empower people and equip them to tell their own stories.”
Mock's upcoming shows will include a college-set drama following a young trans woman leaving her small town for the first time, a series about New Orleans after the abolishment of slavery, and a reboot of a classic sitcom.
"It’s anchored deeply in my own experience," Mock said of the collegiate series. "She decides to not be so open about being trans. What does it mean for a trans girl to just be in college? Just have her on a journey, and not so focused on her identity or origin story. What does it mean to be in this body and this world and to share space with people who don’t yet know you?"
History in the making!
