Candis Cayne

Candis Cayne is an American actress, dancer, and performer who broke barriers as the first transgender actress to play a recurring transgender character in prime-time American drama, as Carmelita on Dirty Sexy Money (2007). Born in Maui, she moved to New York in the early 1990s, became a celebrated fixture of the city's drag and nightlife scene, and came out as transgender in 1996. Her screen work includes the transgender character Alexis Stone on Nip/Tuck (2003), an arc as a trans patient undergoing groundbreaking surgery on Grey's Anatomy (2005), a role on Transparent (2014), and a memorable turn as the Fairy Queen on The Magicians (2015). She appeared in Disclosure (2020), the documentary examining the history of transgender representation on screen, and was a close friend and confidante of Caitlyn Jenner during Jenner's public transition, appearing alongside her on I Am Cait (2015). Openly trans throughout her public life, Cayne is widely credited with opening doors for trans performers in an industry that had long shut them out.