"Grey's Anatomy" hopes to make another impactful story about transgender as it enlists Candis Cayne for a multiple episode arc for season 14.
According to showrunner Krista Vernoff, Cayne's arc was inspired by a true story. The 46-year-old out transwoman will play a transgender patient who approaches the hospital for a "groundbreaking" vaginoplasty surgery.
Her character is based on Hayley Anthony, a real-life marketing consultant and transwoman who helped Jess Ting, the director of surgery at Mount Sinai's Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, invent a groundbreaking procedure that turned a piece of tissue from the cavity of her abdomen into a vagina.
"[The surgery] revolutionizes the making of a vagina and we thought that was a really cool story and Candis is playing a character inspired by something we read," Vernoff told The Hollywood Reporter.
Cayne's story arc comes just a few weeks after Dr. Casey Parker, played by out transman Alex Blue Davis, came out as a "proud transman" on the show. This was after he saved the hospital and its many patients from a hacker who took over its computer systems and airconditioning.
His on-screen revelation was an attempt at putting transgender individuals outside the "punchlines, victims, and villains" genre, and looking at them as a human being before anything else.
Following the announcement of her upcoming role, Cayne expressed her joy via Instagram, saying she is "so excited about this!"
Cayne made history in 2007, when she became the first transgender woman to be cast in a recurring role on primetime TV for "Dirty Sexy Money."
In an interview with TIME last October, she shared that she thought it was nearly impossible to be an actress. "The first part of my career was doing prostitute role, drug addict roles, or drag queen roles. I would go to these auditions and say 'I'm trans,' tried to pitch myself even though nobody really wanted to talk about it," she recalled of her early years in the entertainment industry.
