Rūrangi series writer and executive producer Cole Meyers. Photo / Alex Burton
Rūrangi series writer and executive producer Cole Meyers. Photo / Alex Burton
THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW
Aotearoa’s Emmy Award-winning drama Rūrangi is back for a second season. For the trans community, says series writer and executive producer Cole Meyers, it’s not only changing lives but saving them.
Rūrangi is about a trans man who goes back to his small, rural hometownafter 10 years away to reconnect after trauma. It’s about healing the past, healing relationships, and finding the courage to own who you are.
The fact that Caz has transitioned is a big part of it, but he’s so many other things as well. [Elz Carrad, who plays Caz, speaks fluent te reo and is of Te Whakatōhea and Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki descent.]
For many trans people, certainly for myself, the physical aspect was secondary to the emotional and mental changes. But the classic trans narrative [on screen] is always about the medical transition. That’s boring, we’ve seen it a million times. And it’s still attached to that sensational spectacle mentality — another indicator that the people who made it are on the outside looking in.
All the stuff around trans “visibility”... In distilling it down to just that one word, we’re missing a lot of context and conversation. Awareness is great and all, but in that word, there’s not actually any meaningful change. It’s like the lowest bar ever: recognising that we exist.
Elz Carrad (centre) plays a trans man who returns to the politically divided dairy community of Rūrangi to reconnect with his father, played by Coen Holloway (right) and his childhood sweetheart Jem, played by Liam Coleman (left).
Being at the Emmys in New York last year [where Rūrangi won an international award for best short-form series] was mind-blowing. Even if we’d all just walked on stage and no words had been said, the act of an out and visible non-binary person — I was looking really glam, if I say so myself — being honoured in that space, in that way, has power.
Later, I was on the phone with my partner and trying to work through why I was crying. As much as there was excitement and shock and joy, I think they were tears of relief. I’m still not sure exactly how to describe it but I felt at least some of the weight lift from my shoulders, or my heart, about the impact of something like Rūrangi receiving an award of that type and the reach that it’s given.
Representation like this changes lives, absolutely. But it’s not overstating it to say that it saves lives, too. Maybe some of those little cuts from all the other day-to-day experiences of invisibility or discrimination or internalised shame can start to heal.
It’s getting better now but there was quite a big phase in Hollywood where playing a trans character was the hip new thing — the biggest “acting challenge”. Seeing Jared Leto from Dallas Buyers Club turn up on stage in a full beard to accept a Best Actor award for playing a trans woman … it emphasises this incorrect idea that trans people are just pretending. It’s a costume.
The film that has a prominent place in my own history is Boys Don’t Cry, with Hilary Swank, a cis woman, playing Brandon Teena, a trans man. For 25 years of my life, that was the only representation of someone like me that I ever saw.
He’s assaulted, raped and murdered, along with his girlfriend, for being trans. And while it’s a true story — and yes, knowing that violence occurs is the first step in getting that violence to stop — if that’s the only vision or possibility you ever see for someone like you, what does that do to you? I know what that did to me.
In Rūrangi, all the trans characters are played by trans actors. No exceptions. To the point where we had to sit down and go, what if we can’t get a trans actor of the calibre we need to play our main character? And I was like, then we don’t make it. Now is not the time. We’re not going to compromise on that.
Caz is a complex, interesting, flawed character with people who love him and community and friends. He’s not perfect and he’s got s*** and trauma going on, but overall there’s a sense of intimacy and love and healing and growth and empowerment. If I’d watched that back then, instead of Boys Don’t Cry, that whole sliding-doors moment of who would that person be? But then, that person wouldn’t have made something like Rūrangi.
— As told to Joanna Wane
• An industry consultant on trans issues and a dialogue writer on Shortland Street, Cole Meyers is the series writer and executive producer of local drama series Rūrangi. A new season, Rūrangi: Rising Lights, premieres on Prime from February 12 and both seasons will be on Neon from February 13. The original film version screens on Prime at 9.30pm on February 5.
