The Brief

The answer to the question of “Who can play what role?” — in terms of race, gender identity, sexuality, physical ability or age — has changed over the years.

And when it comes to films about transgender people — like Boys Don’t Cry in 1999, Transamerica in 2005 and Dallas Buyers Club in 2013 — there’s been a bit of a reappraisal in recent years, about whether the trans roles in those films should have gone to trans actors.

The argument makes sense. Even today, there are very few opportunities available for trans performers. In the five years leading up to 2021, the year of GLAAD’s latest report on the “quantity, quality and diversity” of LGBTQ characters in major studio films, they found only one transgender character.

But for the filmmakers behind the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry, the question of what kind of actor could — or should — have embodied the central role is a complicated one.

How ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ was cast

The film is a fictionalized version of the real-life story of Brandon Teena, a 21-year-old transgender man who in 1993 was beaten, raped and later killed. Brandon’s story rose to national attention with coverage in publications like The New Yorker and Playboy. A documentary was released in 1998, and then the narrative film Boys Don’t Cry in 1999.

The actor selected for the starring role was Hilary Swank, a cisgender woman. She earned widespread praise for her portrayal and won the Academy Award for best actress in 2000.

But at the outset, co-writer and director Kimberly Peirce (he/she) had intended to cast a trans man. Over the course of more than three years, Peirce conducted hundreds of interviews — both as research for writing the film and in an effort to cast the central role.

Actress Hilary Swank holds her Oscar for Best Actress for her role in "Boys Don't Cry" at the 72nd Annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles on March 26, 2000.

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Hector Mata

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AFP via Getty Images

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And at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, you can see Hilary Swank’s audition to play Brandon along with auditions from two trans men who were also considered: Silas Howard and Harry Dodge.

“We wanted to approach this very carefully,” associate curator Dara Jaffe told The Academy Museum Podcast. The museum got permission from all three actors to display their auditions side by side. “In any case where you're showing auditions of someone who didn't get the role, I think it's a bit sensitive. But especially given that Silas and Harry are both trans men and there has been a lot of discussion over the casting of Brandon Teena, and of course there's a lot of push now for roles such as that to be played and told by people who can authentically embody that experience, that real-life lived experience.”

Peirce says the auditions from Dodge and Howard “were part of my better understanding of that character.”

“I cry when I watch that stuff, because I see the beauty of Harry Dodge and the beauty of Silas Howard and the authenticity of the lives that they were living, and that I was living a very similar life, but mine wasn't captured on camera. And that we were all leaning in to try to capture the essence and the beauty of this story.”

The search for Brandon

“We went all over the country looking for someone to play this important role,” casting director Kerry Barden (he/him) told The Academy Museum Podcast host Jacqueline Stewart.

The outreach was mostly to non-professional actors and that while they ultimately went with “more traditional casting” in selecting Swank, Barden says there was a real effort to find someone who was trans, or from the LGBTQ community.

Barden’s credits include American Psycho, Dallas Buyers Club, Spotlight, The Help, and several films by director John Waters.

He says casting Boys Don’t Cry “at that point, and still partially is, one of the biggest challenges in casting I'd ever come upon.”

During the casting process for a film, Barden says, “usually it's not as in-depth as this was, and you don't have as much time. Usually we have a start date and with this, we didn't have a start date until we found Brandon. Because we couldn't make the movie without that.”

A trans journey

For Kimberly Peirce, the process of casting the film was also a very personal one. Peirce describes herself as a combination of trans and butch lesbian.

“It was such a fascinating journey because I was trying to figure out my own transness and my own butch lesbian-ness and, and all my desire,” she says.

Early on, while Peirce was starting to think about making Boys Don’t Cry while in grad school, “the first question that I was asked by my lesbian playwriting teacher was, ‘Is Brandon a lesbian, or is Brandon trans? Does Brandon want to sleep with women, or does Brandon want to be a man?’”

“Immediately people wanted to simplify it,” Peirce says. “They wanted to put Brandon into a category. And particularly because I was searching for my own identity, I knew that the last thing I wanted to do was simplify Brandon. So I went and interviewed trans people … It was like, 'Let me understand everything before I start simplifying.'”

And after hundreds of interviews, Peirce began to doubt they would ever find the right person for the role.

“Kerry [Barden] had done so much work and every night he would send me these tapes and I would just fall asleep watching them being like, ‘Oh my God, nobody's gonna get this human. This doesn't exist anywhere,” she said.

Hilary Swank first came to the filmmakers’ attention when Barden was out in Los Angeles, casting for another film. And at first, she didn’t seem like an obvious fit for the role to Barden.

“When Hilary came in,” Barden says, “it was like, ‘But you're so Julia Roberts. You're just such a girl, you know?’ And she just kept working it and working it. I mean, Kimberly put her through the mill.”

Peirce saw something different in Swank.

“Hilary's tape came in and she has a naturally angular face. She has those gorgeous brown eyes, and it's not that she passed necessarily as a man, it's that she blurred the gender line,” Peirce says. “So that was a real win that I had not found in almost every other actor that I looked at, other than the trans men and the drag kings.”

Peirce had Swank work with trans people, do voice training, and live as a man.

“So whatever we saw in the room was really the beginning of the journey,” Peirce says. “And we all had to, you know, check ourselves and say, 'We are about to entrust the most important role in this, that carries the entire movie, to this human being. Do they have what it takes and will they give it what it takes to succeed?'”

How might ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ be cast today?

Barden says he thinks today they would have a larger pool of trans talent to choose from, “and it would make it easier to do this film with a trans person in the lead.”

“And I think, you know, having given a voice to this trans community that was kind of nascent at that point,” Barden says, “I feel like that's part of what the legacy of this film is. You get to have these people that now are saying, ‘I can do this. I can be out there, I can be, you know, honoring my life journey and also be an artist that has a public profile without being slammed or being vilified.’”

Peirce agrees with Barden, that today there would be more trans and queer actors to consider for the role. A lot of that is due to progress and change within the queer community over the last 25 years.

“What you would probably have is people who identify as nonbinary, people who identify as trans, but maybe not having surgery and maybe not having hormones,” Peirce says. “So you would have a wider pool of people who were able to approach that role, and that would have been fascinating.”

Listen to the conversation

How do I find The Academy Museum Podcast?

It's now available from LAist Studios. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts, or listen to Episode 7 in the player above.

As Los Angeles homeowners grapple with the expense of rebuilding after last year’s devastating fires, an L.A. City Councilmember is putting forward an idea that could lower some costs.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Pacific Palisades, has introduced a motion to explore waiving part of the city’s portion of the local sales tax for fire victims who purchase rebuilding materials in the city.

The 1% of the local 9.75% sales tax that goes into the city’s general fund would be given back to consumers under the proposal. The waiver could apply to lumber, appliances and other rebuilding goods purchased within the city.

The motion, introduced Friday by Park and seconded by Councilmember John Lee, says: “The City should do everything within its power to alleviate the financial burden for these residents and businesses in order to facilitate their return and stabilize the Pacific Palisades community.”

Would it make much of a difference? 

Economists told LAist the proposal could help many homeowners mitigate the high cost of rebuilding, but likely wouldn’t tip the scales for under-insured, under-resourced property owners.

“It wouldn't hurt if it's very well designed and easy to use,” said Alexander Meeks, a director at the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute. “But I'm not sure if it's really going to tackle the scale of the financial challenge that survivors are facing.”

Meeks noted that the tax waiver wouldn’t lower up-front costs such as environmental testing, architectural design and permitting. And it may not help homeowners sourcing raw materials from outside the city.

Zhiyun Li, a UCLA Anderson School of Management economist, said the waiver could help some homeowners justify the additional cost of rebuilding more fire-safe structures.

“Homeowners must typically pay out of pocket to upgrade to IBHS+ standards, which are more stringent,” Li said. “The tax waiver could encourage upgrading to IBHS+ standards or investing more in mitigation, thereby reducing future risk and improving the likelihood of maintaining insurance coverage.”

What’s next for the proposal? 

The proposed tax relief would not be available to properties that have been sold since the fires started in January 2025.

The motion has been sent to the City Council’s budget and fire recovery committees. If approved by the full council, it would require the city administrative officer, the Office of Finance and the city attorney to report back to the council within 60 days on options for crafting a tax relief plan.

The motion calls for the report to consider factors such as how to minimize the burden of administering the tax relief, what documentation homeowners would have to submit and what it would cost the city to oversee the program.

Senate and House Republican leadership have resurrected a stalled plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security after a record 47-day funding lapse.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a joint statement on Wednesday that the House will take up a measure passed by the Senate last week to fund most of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the end of September.

Republicans would then attempt to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three years using a party-line budget reconciliation bill that would not require support from Democrats.

"In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited," Thune and Johnson wrote.

The agreement comes nearly a week after House Republicans dismissed an identical plan, refusing to take up the Senate-passed measure and instead passing a 60-day short term funding bill for all of DHS that had little chance of overcoming Democratic opposition in the Senate.

Johnson called the agreement a "joke" and President Donald Trump declined to publicly endorse the deal. Trump had previously resisted any package that did not include his push to overhaul federal elections known as the Save America Act.

"I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it," Trump told reporters last week.

Democrats welcomed the agreement as in line with their pledge not to give ICE any more money without reforms after immigration enforcement agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. But the deal does not include any of the policy demands Democrats are pressing for, such as a ban on masks for immigration enforcement officers and requiring warrants issued by a judge, not just the agency, to enter homes.

"For days, Republican divisions derailed a bipartisan agreement, making American families pay the price for their dysfunction," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a statement Wednesday. "Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered."

Trump seemed to bless the revived plan earlier Wednesday, writing on social media that he wants a party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement on his desk by June 1.

"We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won't be able to stop us," Trump wrote.

Despite the shutdown, ICE has been minimally impacted because Republican lawmakers approved $75 billion for ICE through another party-line budget reconciliation bill last year.

Congress is on a two-week recess, but the Senate and House could move to fund all of DHS except ICE and CBP as early as Thursday using a procedure known as unanimous consent that allows the chambers to circumvent formal voting as long as no member objects.

Even during a recess when most members are not in Washington, this could be unpredictable, especially in the House, where many hard-line conservatives oppose a deal that does not fully fund DHS.

"Let's make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again," Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X. "If that's the vote, I'm a NO."

If a member does object, that could require waiting for another vote when all members are back from recess.

Claudia Grisales contributed reporting.
Copyright 2026 NPR

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.