In a personal essay published Monday in
Time, actor Josie Totah came out as transgender, saying, “I
identify as female, specifically as a transgender female.”
Previously known as J.J. Totah, who
stars as Michael Patel on the NBC comedy Champions, Totah said
that her pronouns are “she, her and hers.”
Totah, 17, said that she realized that
she was transgender while watching I Am Jazz, the reality show
starring transgender teen Jazz Jennings.
“I always knew on some level that I
was female,” she said. “But it crystallized about three years
ago when I was a 14-year-old watching the show I Am Jazz with
my mother.”
Totah, who as a child played a
recurring role on the Disney Channel's Jessie, said that
people assumed she was a “gay boy.”
“Numerous reporters have asked me in
interview how it feels to be a young gay man,” she
wrote. “I was even introduced that way before receiving an
award from an LGBTQ+ rights organization. I understand that they
didn't really know better. I almost felt like I owed it to everybody
to be that gay boy. But that has never been the way I think of
myself.”
Totah said that she didn't correct
people's assumptions about her sexuality because she worried she
wouldn't be accepted and that fans who knew her “from the time when
I acted in a Disney show would be confused.”
She said that she now realizes that
hiding her “true self is not healthy.”
“This week, I’m going off to
college. I’m also going to continue my acting career, and I am so
excited to do both things as myself. I plan to play roles I haven’t
had the opportunity to play. And I can only imagine how much more fun
it’s going to be to play someone who shares my identity, rather
than having to contort myself to play a boy. I’m going to gun for
those roles, be it a transgender female or a cisgender female.
Because it’s a clean slate – and a new world,” Totah concluded.