Grey’s Anatomy has brought on Candis Cayne for a major transgender storyline. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Cayne will play a trans patient who comes to Grey Sloan for a “groundbreaking” vaginoplasty surgery. The storyline is inspired by the story of Hayley Anthony, a woman who helped Mount Sinai’s director of surgery at the Center for Transgender Medicine create a new procedure for vaginoplasty surgeries.
“[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,” Grey’s Anatomy showrunner Krista Vernoff told the Reporter.
Grey’s Anatomy has already done a lot of work to up trans representation on television. This past season, out trans actor Alex Blue Davis came out as a “proud trans man” on the show after first saving the hospital from a hacker threatening multiple patients’ lives.
Cayne was the first trans actress to play a recurring trans character in 2007 on ABC’s Dirty Sexy Money.
Subscribe to get a twice-weekly dose of queer news, updates, and insights from the INTO team.in Your Inbox
Images via Getty.