19 People In The TV Industry The LGBTQ Community is Thankful For

13. Laura Zak and Jen Richards

We’ve seen more and more transgender roles coming to screen recently. The Fosters, Orange is the New Black, and Transparent have all taken on the goal to portray real characters who were born in the wrong body. Laura Zak doesn’t think that’s enough though. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, she notes, “But what’s next is we need our hot messes, our rebels, our sexpots and drama queens. We need representation across the board.”

Enter Her Story– a web series following the personal lives of a trans woman and a queer woman as they explore sexuality, desire, dating, and ultimately, themselves. Zak teamed up with Jen Richards (previously known for I am Cait) to tackle this project. The two women kickstarted the idea, wrote the script, and also portray the leads. It was important to them to have trans and queer women be at the fore-front of this production, so that’s exactly what they did.

Although transgender representation on screen is nowhere near perfect, Zak and Richards have taken it one step further, hopefully opening the doors to other.