Trailblazing activist Candis Cayne knows better than anybody how important trans representation in media really is, which, for many like her, makes the country’s recent slide backward even more devastating.
Cayne — who hosts Advocate Channel’s Candis Cayne’s Secret Garden — explained how progress stalled once Donald Trump entered the Oval Office.
“I think we were making strides especially under [Barack] Obama,” Cayne exclusively told The Messenger, “and when [Trump] was elected, it started to give people a freedom to abuse our community, especially the trans community.”
Cayne explained how those ramifications are still being felt today, including television networks “who are scared to put out good trans content because of backlash.”
“We were getting to a place where we were starting to flourish in the media, and let’s just face it, things change when people see it on film and television — see it in a positive light and understand what we go through,” Cayne continued. “When that stopped, change can’t happen.”
The Dirty Sexy Money actress has experienced the decline first-hand, explaining, “Just pitching shows and trying to get meetings in rooms with networks is twice as hard as it was five years ago.”
Luckily, Cayne took things into her own hands with her new show Candis Cayne’s Secret Garden, a seed that got planted during the pandemic.
“I was really used to working and auditioning and going places and doing things. I had nothing to do,” Cayne said. “I was sitting around my house, and my garden was just kind of straggling along.”
So, she got to work.
Before long, Cayne had cultivated her garden into a place of “zen and peace,” and now she’s taking the opportunity to pay it forward on the new show where she helps some of her famous friends do the same.
In addition to showing off her green thumb, Candis Cayne’s Secret Garden is a celebration of queer and trans joy — something that Cayne is thrilled to be able to revel in.
“The first five roles I ever did, I got murdered,” she said. “One was in a toilet. The world is used to seeing trans people in areas of trauma and abuse. So it’s important to see fun and laughter and jokes.”
New episodes of Candis Cayne’s Secret Garden post weekly on the Advocate Channel and YouTube.