GLAAD’s Shar Jossell joined Totah at Vulture Festival ahead of her big panel discussion.
Totah talks about how excited she is to be able to discuss her new series now that the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes have come to a deal.
“Now, gratefully, because of our awesome union, we get to talk about the projects that we’ve been working on,” Totah tells Jossell. “Which randomly, coincidentally, the strike ended the day that my show that I’m on came out.”
Totah stars in Apple TV+’s newest series The Buccaneers. “It is a period drama, but my favorite thing about it is that it’s modernized in a way that is grounded and it makes it feel a lot closer to you than a lot of other period dramas that I’ve seen that kind of feel like caricatures of people,” she explains.
The Buccaneers takes place in the 1870s and follows a group of fun-loving young American girls living in London, creating clashes in culture and rethinking tradition while sent on a mission to secure husbands and titles. “There’s romance, there’s sadness, there’s a little queerness.”
“It gets a little queer in there, because they existed back then!” Totah reminds viewers that queer people have been around “since the dawn of time.”
Totah stopped there at the risk of spoiling anything for fans!
Totah is excited to be starring in her first drama role on The Buccaneers. “It’s so crazy because I had only really ever done comedy, because I’m quite un-serious as a human being. So, when I even told people that I was doing a drama, they giggled because that just doesn’t seem real.”
This isn’t the only genre Totah is experimenting with as she also teases a horror film she shot earlier this year. When asked what her favorite genre to act in is she joked, “I just want to be employed.” She then assured, that she “has fun doing it all.”
As a trans woman, Totah has broken ground in her roles on The Buccaneers and the two-time GLAAD Media Award winning series Saved By The Bell.
“As it pertains to the media, we’ve had a lot of conversations about representation,” she begins to say. “And they can get repetitive sometimes but they’re important to be had. I want to see more conversations about not just what we see, but people who are making decisions.” Totah wants to see more trans directors, writers, and producers working behind the scenes as well.
In this time where anti-LGBTQ legislation is at an all-time high, Totah says that, “This is the time where we need to be louder than ever and our allies need to be louder than ever.”
“I just pray that we get to a place where people can walk down the street and feel safe.”
She closes with a message of hope for her trans siblings out there, “It’s a bit of a dumpster fire right now but there is hope. I think that that’s really exciting. I think the more awareness and the more perception that people gain the more we will grow as a people.”
The Buccaneers is streaming now on Apple TV+ with new episodes premiering Wednesdays. Read more here.