Laverne Cox

**Laverne Cox** (0:05)
Hello there.

**Debbie Millman** (0:06)
Hello, Laverne.

**Laverne Cox** (0:07)
Thank you so much for being here and doing this.

**Debbie Millman** (0:10)
I want to say what I think everybody in the room is saying, how is it possible that you're even more gorgeous in person than you are on television? I am just awestruck. It's going to take me a moment to get my wits about me.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:30)
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.
On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, Debbie speaks with Laverne Cox about her life and career and about the effects of fame on her aspirations.

**Laverne Cox** (0:53)
I know my job is to be myself and to become more of myself.

**Debbie Millman** (1:04)
Laverne Cox is an Emmy-winning actor, producer, advocate, and one of the defining cultural figures of our time. She became internationally known for her groundbreaking role as Sophia Burset on the television show, Orange Is the New Black, a performance that made her the first openly transgender person nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category.
Since then, she has continued to expand on what visibility can mean as an actor, a producer, a host, a speaker and an artist whose work insists on complexity, dignity, glamour, truth and humanity. Her brand new, instant New York Times best-selling memoir, Transcendent, offers a portrait of an artist whose life has been shaped by survival, discipline, beauty and truth. Laverne Cox, welcome to this very special live episode of Design Matters at the Pride Book Fair in New York City.

**Laverne Cox** (2:09)
Thank you so much. That was so beautiful. I appreciate that.

**Debbie Millman** (2:12)
Laverne, first, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about your love of salvation Armani.

**Laverne Cox** (2:21)
It's a phrase I coined in the book. I started in middle school, thrifting, going to thrift stores, and that's when I started dressing myself. We had, in walking distance from our house, on Broad Street in Mobile, Alabama, there was a Salvation Army and Goodwill right next to each other. And this would have been the early 80s, and I could literally get a pair of pants for 25 cents, or a whole outfit for 99 cents or something. So I would, with $5, I would come out with quite a haul. And it was fabulous. And I got to experiment and begin to fashion myself and create myself anew with my salvation or money, with the clothes I got from thrift stores. And the great thing about me as an adult now is that I still love vintage clothes.
You know, we've elevated maybe a little bit.
I am wearing Comme du Garçon today, not Mugler. And many people, like people like, it's always Mugler. It's mostly Mugler, but occasionally it's Comme du Garçon.

**Debbie Millman** (3:36)
As one does.

**Laverne Cox** (3:36)
Vintage, of course.

**Debbie Millman** (3:39)
Transcendent opens with the prompt, tell me something you don't want us to know. And then moves towards a sentence that reads more like a declaration. Let the truth in.
As after years of being asked to represent history, visibility and progress, what truth about your own life finally needed to become speakable through your new book?

**Laverne Cox** (4:08)
All the things that I still had either shame about or felt if I told the truth, it would reinforce some narrative about trans people that wouldn't be helpful. I had to let go of that.
I've made a lot of choices and decisions about what I disclose publicly, because I don't want to feed into a stereotype, a negative stereotype about trans people or set us back in some way. But my truth is my truth, and I have to, I quote, this is a quote from the book, the Renee Brown quote, and when we deny our stories, they define us when we own our stories, we can write a brave new ending. And so this is me trying to own my story even more fully. And I thought I had processed all of my trauma and with my wonderful therapists I've been with for 10 years, and previous therapists I've been in therapy for 26 years, I thought I was like, good. And what the book made me realize is that there's a lot of unprocessed trauma still, like the things that I've barely written about, the childhood sex abuse, the orphanage, like there are things that I've never really, I barely skimmed the surface with my therapist. I had never told my therapist the orphanage story. Like how do you? So there's some work to do. And then I thought that memories that were suppressed would stay suppressed, but in the process things came back and that was awful.