- The Observer, Sunday 9 March 2008
For the pilot of Channel 4's glossy new soap Dirty Sexy Money, Candis Cayne's voice was digitally lowered in post-production. Thirty-year-old Cayne was disappointed that the editors were trying to make her sound more manly, but, she says, as the first trans-actress to play a transsexual on prime-time TV, she's learned to pick her battles.
Born Brendan McDaniel, in Maui, Hawaii, she always identified more with her female cousin than she did with her twin brother. 'But I wasn't in torment,' she says, in a yawning gentle drawl, 'because my parents never stopped me from dressing up. They always allowed me to feel the way I wanted to.'
When McDaniel moved to New York, he took the name Candis for drag performances, and started auditioning for male acting roles. 'Nothing was making sense. In relationships I didn't feel like a gay man. And meditating one night, I remember realising, "I want to grow old as a woman".' Ten years ago, he started hormone therapy, 'which is scary! It's not just like changing your hair colour. But the second I started, I knew I just wasn't hurting any more.'
On screen, Cayne is a gleaming beauty - Lana Turner in low-cut Lurex, or a gentle-jawed Jerry Hall - but it's taken time for her glamour to settle. 'In the first couple of years when you're transitioning you don't really fit into any gender, because you're changing over. You have to start getting electrolysis before you even start your therapy. But I think all the weird looks help to give you conviction in who you really are. Then, after telling my parents I was gay three years before, I had to come out for the second time ...'
After appearing in drag in Stonewall and as a cameo alongside Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes in To Wong Foo, super-stylist Patricia Field recommended Cayne for the part of Carmelita, Billy Baldwin's girlfriend in Dirty Sexy Money, a character that director Craig Wright defines as the 'truth teller'. 'Though there are a lot of similarities between Carmelita and I, she's gone through a few more struggles in her life.'
Now living in LA with her boyfriend of five years, the much-pecced DJ Marco, whose six-year-old daughter calls her 'pretty mommy', she blends in with her neighbouring actresses, some of whose surgical procedures are much more flagrant. 'I don't really talk about surgery,' Cayne states, 'because I feel like no one should be judged on their journey.'
Her language, like her highlighted hair and gleaming teeth, reeks of California, but where phrases like 'remain true to your soul' and 'grow to love yourself' sound hollow from the average actress, they seem somehow insightful from Candis Cayne. 'I consider myself true, which, I know, some people look at as radical, but I enjoy the normalcies of life. I'm not out there trying to transform things, but somehow, by being easy to talk to, and easy to look at, and on a mainstream TV show, I think that I'm helping the public's opinions about transgendered people to change, slowly.'
Cayne points out though, that while she's the first transsexual to play a transsexual, she's not the first to appear as a woman on mainstream TV. 'There have been actresses who transitioned and nobody knew,' she says. 'But for me, with everybody knowing my history, it will be harder. I'm sure there are some great scripts calling for an ultra-glamorous woman. And I'm prepared to be ultra-glamorous.'
· Dirty Sexy Money airs on 21 March on Channel 4
