Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, The Switch, TV's first transgender comedy series, is expected to be hitting the air on OUTtv, the Hollywood Reporter reports. The Switch will portray all transgender characters with transgender actors and actresses and address realities facing the transgender community like housing and employment discrimination.
Julie Vu, a transgender woman and YouTube personality, will be playing the lead role of a successful mobile IT manager whose success turns sour when she loses her job and apartment after coming out. But this show will not be another tragic representation of a transgender person's experience – Amy Fox, writer, actor, and producer of The Switch, said "I really wanted to provide something where people walked away feeling good about being transgender, or meeting and knowing transgender people…I don't want people to feel sorry for us, or we to feel sorry for ourselves. I want us to feel optimistic about our future." The show will follow Vu's character's journey as she rebuilds her life in the queer underground with a group of transgender friends.
In an exclusive interview with GLAAD last month, Katrina Caudle, the show's publicist, told us:
The show's storylines span the everyday nuances of dating, sex, disclosure - the little details about transition and life that are less talked about...It also talks about how to put your life back together when it falls apart, how to create family and community, how to grow into your own brand of awesome, and more. All these things are part of trans experiences, but are not the totality of them. All of these things are part of a human experience. The show treats people like people - beautiful, complicated, with a breadth of experiences.
The show is scheduled to air and be available for streaming by August 2015.