She'll make a Sweet Transvestite! Orange Is The New Black star Laverne Cox to play Dr Frank-N-Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show remake

Published: 20:18 EST, 21 October 2015 | Updated: 02:36 EST, 22 October 2015

View
comments

She has some very big stiletto shoes to fill.

But no doubt Laverne Cox is already relishing the challenge of playing the transvestite scientist role made famous by Tim Curry in the forthcoming TV remake of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

As the new Dr Frank-N-Furter the 31-year-old actress, who made history as the first transgender performer to receive an Emmy nomination, has landed the meatiest role of all in the forthcoming Fox show.

Scroll down for video

Big stilettos to fill: Laverne Cox has been cast in the transvestite mad scientist role made famous by Tim Curry in the forthcoming Rocky Horror Picture Show TV remake

According to Deadline the casting move paved the way for the long-in-gestation show to get a formal green light for an autumn 2016 premiere.

Tim Curry gave a famously flamboyant performance as the character in both the original Broadway show and the 1975 movie, which last month became the longest film in theatrical distribution in history with a grand total of 40 years.

The original Rocky Horror Show was a 1973 musical created by Crystal Maze legend Richard O'Brien, and was the bald thespian's comical love letter to the science fiction and horror B movies of the late 1940s through to the early 1970s

In the story sweethearts Janet Weiss and Brad Majors, who were played by Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick in the 1975 picture, end up at Frank-N-Furter’s castle after their car breaks down.

Spicy Curry: English star Tim played the character with flamboyant relish in the 1975 cult classic film

They arrive just in time for a science convention he is holding, where he unveils Rocky Horror, an oiled beefcake created to fulfill all the pansexual scientist's desires.

However he first famously introduces himself as 'a sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania,' before launching into the song Sweet Transvestite.

The television show will be a two-hour taped event, and is purportedly a 'reimagining' of the cult classic, which appropriately enough was made by 20th Century Fox.

It is a busy time for Laverne, for as well as receiving an Emmy nomination for her role as transgender inmate Sophia Burset the Netflix prison drama, she has a starring role in a legal show pilot called Doubt on CBS.

Star turn: Laverne was nominated for an Emmy for her performance as transgender inmate Sophia Burset in Orange Is The New Black

It remains to be seen how she will approach playing the role, and to what extent she will channel Tim Curry.

The award-winning English actor recently revealed he almost played the mad scientist as a German.

However he changed his mind after overhearing a woman speak with a plummy English accent on public transport.

'One day I was on a London bus and I heard a woman say, "Do you have a house in town or a house in the country?" And I thought, "That's it. That's what he should sound like: the queen." It changed everything.'