Michael Martin“I was incredibly nervous,” says B.D. Wong of taking on his role as a transgender hacker in the first season of USA’s Golden Globe–winning tech thriller Mr. Robot. Yet if anyone could, well, hack it, why not him? The versatile actor brought Broadway to its feet playing a male spy disguised as a female opera diva in 1988’s M. Butterfly. Still, that did nothing to assuage his anxiety about portraying the mysterious Whiterose, who returns for Robot’s second season in July.
Out: You were anxious about playing trans, but you received such acclaim for playing another gender before.
B.D. Wong: When you get an offer to do a TV show, you don’t always know where the producers are coming from. I said, “Whoa, I don’t want to exploit a maligned community of people.” The last thing I wanted to be was a man disguised as a woman. I think that’s old.
What sold you?
Sam [Esmail, Mr. Robot’s creator] was able to allay my fears: He said Whiterose wasn’t a man disguised as a woman — she was a woman disguised as a man. And that was very different to me. There are things in the second season we keep having dialogue about: “Tell me why this is happening, so I can be comfortable with it.”
Had you had the chance to play another gender since M. Butterfly?
It hadn’t come up in 25 years. My 28-year-old self thought I’d never do it again — that if I did, I’d never get out of doing it. Besides, there was never going to be a part again as good as that one. But I thought, This is interesting. It’s time for me to bury any stigma I had about doing it again.
How did you adjust to Whiterose’s hair and makeup?
[Laughs] I had to dismantle this hard drive with these really long fingernails on. And I had these toweringly fabulous shoes. Nobody ever saw them, but I insisted on wearing them all night. There was a lot of physical discomfort involved. It was a nightmare of props and costumes crashing together.
Mr. Robot Season 2 returns July 13 on USA.
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B.D. Wongs on Playing Trans (and Badass) in Mr. Robot Season 2
00B.D. Wongs on Playing Trans (and Badass) in Mr. Robot Season 2