Laith Ashley breaks barrier of gender diversity in first feature
BY VICTOR MELAMED | PHOTO BY MAX BRONNE
Trans male model, actor, singer-songwriter, and activist Laith Ashley (Pose, Strut) has joined the cast of My Divorce Party as the character of Ajax, an alluring but insightful male stripper in Joshua Tree.
On joining the cast Laith says, “I am super excited to join the My Divorce Party team! This will be my first feature film, and I’m eager to be on set, to perform, and to learn. I will be playing a cisgender character, which isn’t a common occurrence in film and television for a transperson. We are just now getting the opportunities to appear in the media in a positive light as a whole, and having the chance to just be a performer telling a story, is HUGE.”
Breaking ground is nothing new for Ashley, who was the first trans member of the pit crew in Rupaul’s Drag Race in addition to appearing in fashion campaigns for Diesel, Barney’s, and Calvin Klein.
“I will be playing a cisgender character, which isn’t a common occurrence in film and television for a transperson.”
In the comedy My Divorce Party, the protagonist Xan, played by Desiree Staples, blows through her savings with her friends in an extravagant weekend to ensure her soon to be ex-husband cannot seize any of the money in a settlement. She encounters Ajax in a seedy, desert strip club, where the undeniably attractive exotic dancer stands out amongst the eclectic locals.
Principal photography is set to begin this fall in Joshua Tree. The entirely female creative team considers diversity paramount to the structure of the movie. My Divorce Party executive producer, writer-director Heidi Weitzer (Darcy on House Arrest) says, “It’s gross that we have to still talk about diversity as an out of the ordinary thing. Having a cast that wasn’t homogeneous was very important to me, because it reflects the world we live in, the world I live in.”
