Roles for trans and non-binary characters are vanishing, actors and experts warn

Last week, actor Asia Kate Dillon shared that nearly a decade after breaking boundaries playing the first non-binary main character in a major North American TV show, they are seeking a job in the service industry amid diminishing opportunities for trans performers. 

The post from Dillon, who played Taylor Mason on the Showtime drama Billions from 2017 to 2023, comes a month after non-binary actor Jack Haven, known for Atypical and I Saw the TV Glow, made a plea on social media for casting roles to earn $4,000 US to qualify for SAG-AFTRA health insurance. 

And despite a standout performance in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, Canadian actor Elliot Page said earlier this year he hasn't been getting casting calls. 

It's part of a trend that actors and experts tell CBC News we're seeing in Canada as well. 

While hit shows like Crave's Heated Rivalry, which features many cisgender queer characters and a trans actor in a small role, have made strides for 2SLGBTQ+ representation, complex trans stories are increasingly disappearing from screens amid rising anti-trans rhetoric across the globe. Experts warn this only makes it harder to combat dehumanizing myths.

"I can count on one hand the number of auditions I've had this year for film and TV work," Asher Rose, a non-binary actor and chair of the gender diversity subcommittee at ACTRA Toronto, told CBC News.

Asia Kate Dillon, left, seen here attending MGM+'s New York premiere of A Spy Among Friends in 2023, and Jack Haven, right, seen at the New York premiere of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma in August 2026, have both recently made social media posts referencing difficulties in finding roles. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images and CJ Rivera/Invision/The Associated Press)

Streamers and big networks are caving to the cultural creep of conservatism, Rose said, and "consider trans stories, trans actors and trans characters to be too specific, potentially too alienating, as opposed to just part of human experience."

Actor Izaiah Dockery told CBC News he used to get multiple auditions a week, but now the few he gets as a Black trans man are smaller and more likely to rely on racial stereotypes. 

When he tried to pitch a series he co-wrote that had a mainly trans cast, "the feedback we kept getting from broadcasters was that it was too in-your-face."

Izaiah Dockery says the number of auditions he's being offered has gone down sharply in recent years, and those that he does get often rely on stereotypes. (Izaiah Dockery)

Trans representation in film vanishing: GLAAD

When GLAAD started tracking representation in film in 2013, 14 films contained at least one 2SLGBTQ+ character.

Representation climbed through the 2010s, but after peaking in the early 2020s, it’s on the decline again, according to GLAAD's latest Where We Are in Film report, released this July.

It's worse for trans characters. In 2022, there were 12 films judged as transgender-inclusive by GLAAD. This dropped to two films in 2023 and 2024 and zero in 2025. 

Of the 225 films released by Top 10 distributors in 2025, seven included a non-binary character and zero included a trans character. 

"I feel like we've done a kind of 360 in the last 12 years, where there was very little representation of trans people and then we grew to a more encouraging place ... [and now] we've gone back to the start of that circle, only worse, actually," said writer and director Shelley Thompson, who directed the film Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor.

The film, about a trans woman returning home to her town in Nova Scotia, was released in 2022, at a time when trans representation on screen seemed to be hitting its stride. 

A still from Dawn, her Dad & the Tractor. The film revolves around a young transgender woman who returns to her family farm for the first time since her transition. (Dawn, her Dad & the Tractor/New Dawn Films)

But Thompson says it would be harder to make and distribute that film today. She says big industry players see diversity as a trend, not a natural part of life and art.

"And the trend of the trans storyline, I think that's underwater at the moment."

'Cancel Your Gays'

Although there's more representation in television than film, it's precarious, according to GLAAD.

While 2SLGBTQ+ characters on TV screens had gone up as of May 2025, GLAAD found, around 41 per cent were slated to disappear due to series ending, being cancelled, limited series formats or a character dying or leaving the show. This jumped to 61 per cent for trans characters. Only four trans characters appeared on series that had been officially renewed, GLAAD's data shows. 

Fans dubbed it "Cancel Your Gays" in 2024 after the trend was identified, playing on the "Bury Your Gays" trope of the 2010s, where queer characters were often swiftly killed off.

Many shows featuring trans and non-binary characters, such as Heartstopper, Umbrella Academy, 911: Lone Star and Star Trek: Discovery, ended or were cancelled in the last two years. 

• 'Cancel Your Gays' trend sees 2SLGBTQ+ characters disappearing from TV

Shows like HBO Max’s cult hit Our Flag Means Death — cancelled in 2024 — can have a massive impact for queer audiences, Rose said.

A still from feature film Violence (2025), directed by Connor Marsden, showing actors Asher Rose and Rohan Campbell. (Violence)

Seeing characters like pirate Jim Jimenez, played by the non-binary actor Vico Ortiz, and Rhys Darby's Stede, who falls in love with a man late in life, helped Rose see they could discover their true self at any age.

"For this silly, wonderful comedy, it was kind of life-changing in a lot of ways."

Although a few new shows offer that representation, such as Crave's sapphic softball show Slo Pitch, co-produced by Page, the numbers don't replace what's been cancelled.

Fewer TV shows are being produced overall, according to industry data tracker Luminate, but this doesn't explain the sharp decline in 2SLGBTQ+ characters, Madelaine Rose, chair of the Progress Pride Committee at ACTRA National, told CBC News.

"Why are the queer ones the first [characters] being cut?" she said.

Our Flag Means Death, the cult hit from HBO Max, was one of many ground-breaking shows centering 2SLGBTQ+ storylines that was cancelled in 2024. (HBO Max/Crave)

Anti-trans rhetoric spreading

Experts say it's connected to the surge in anti-2SLGBTQ+ and anti-trans rhetoric in recent years in the U.S. and Canada. 

A spokesperson for the U.S. Pentagon called the hit 2025 Netflix series Boots, about a gay Marine in the 1990s, "woke garbage" last October. Boots was cancelled by December, despite its first season outperforming Netflix titles that were renewed, according to Netflix data. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told Variety it was a business decision and was "absolutely not" connected to political backlash.

U.S. states have passed hundreds of bills since 2021 restricting trans people's access to health care, revoking their legal IDs and barring them from sports teams and public bathrooms that align with their gender.

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Several Canadian provinces, including Saskatchewan, Quebec and Alberta, have adopted anti-trans policies in recent years, including a ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth in Alberta.

We're seeing a "well-orchestrated effort to challenge human rights and inclusion in public life," driven by anti-trans misinformation, said Andrew Perez, executive director at 2SLGBTQ+ advocacy group Egale Canada. 

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That stretches to inclusion on the screen, he said. 

The success of Heated Rivalry, the most-watched original series in Crave's history, demonstrates the demand is there for 2SLGBTQ+ storylines, Perez said, but "creative industries, the film industry, the theatre industry, don't exist in a vacuum and can become more cautious when facing political pressure or perceived controversy."

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Between 2020 and 2024, police-reported hate crimes targeting gender identity or expression in Canada nearly tripled.

• Statistics Canada numbers show Canadians becoming less accepting of gender diversity

• Calgary students stage widespread school walkout to protest Alberta's transgender laws

Jo Vannicola, an Emmy award-winning Canadian actor and author, says Canada is growing less safe for trans and non-binary people, sharing they've experienced harassment in public as recently as two weeks ago.

It's a result of the snowball effect of less representation, they said: when there are fewer well-rounded trans characters onscreen, there are fewer counter-narratives to hateful misinformation put out by anti-trans politicians. 

Jo Vannicola says Canada is growing less safe for trans and non-binary people, sharing that they've experienced hateful attacks as recently as two weeks ago. (Jo Vannicola)

"It … removes the ability for people in the heterosexual, cisgender world to really learn about who we are. And we do everybody a disservice by not doing that. We keep people divided and we keep hate alive."

As opportunities vanish, the community is making its own. This week, Vannicola launched the Queer & Trans Legacy Initiative, aimed at providing more opportunities for trans performers and works, with a live reading of a new screenplay, They, in Toronto.

Actors perform the screenplay They at a reading at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto on Wednesday during the launch of the Queer & Trans Legacy Initiative. (Jo Vannicola)

But without mainstream backing, they won't be able to reach as many eyes.

"You're not going to erase us," Vannicola said. "So let us live, let us make work, let us contribute to the culture and contribute back to us because we deserve it."