Meet Miss Benny, Star of ‘Glamorous’
Miss Benny has been waiting for years now to bring “Glamorous” to life.
The 24-year-old was originally cast in the project back in 2018 when it was a show for the CW. It followed Marco, who was then a teenager fresh out of high school and a diehard beauty fan. The show was dropped by the CW and later picked up by Netflix where it came to life, premiering this summer.
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Marco, then, needed to evolve with Miss Benny.
“A couple years go by now in real life, I’m in my early 20s. I’m experiencing my first heartache and my first successes and failures in my career, and also coming to terms with my identity, and those were all things we wanted to bring to the show,” she says. “So Marco, as we know and love him now, is a 20-something queer person sort of stumbling and making a lot of young adult mistakes when you’re making a coming-of-age show. And so I’m really excited that people will get to have something that is very familiar, but maybe from a new perspective.”
“Glamorous” follows Marco as he spends his days working at a makeup counter while trying to build a following as a beauty influencer until he meets his idol, cosmetics legend Madolyn, who is played by Kim Cattrall, and she gives him a job.
In real life, Benny grew up in Texas and had built a following as a YouTube personality while pursuing acting and music. She was assisting on a photo shoot for the singer Madison Beer when she first heard about “Glamorous,” at a moment of reflection when it came to her work.
“At that point in my career I was debating whether or not I was going to keep trying because it just seemed like nothing was going my way at the time. And then I got a call that they were making a show about somebody just like me and that was the first time I’d ever seen that, and I fought like hell to get the role,” she says. “And we’ve gotten to kind of shape the show around me and shape the show around experiences that I’ve had and I’m just super proud of it.”
Benny’s own journey with her gender identity was worked into the script, reflected in Marco’s life. Shortly after the show premiered, Benny published an article with Time magazine coming out as a trans woman.
“I have been privately living as a transgender woman for the last couple years, and I knew that I wanted to make sure that I felt ready for that step,” she says of writing the piece. “And it was really important to me that it happened in a way where I got to explain myself and talk a little bit about what’s going on in my life. And, you know, in the show, Marco has a journey of gender discovery and that’s something that was very intentionally meant to parallel my life. There’re so many moments in the show where you see Marco’s femininity questioned or challenged, and you get to see Marco decide how much that means. And I think it was really important for me to attach something so personal to a show that I loved so much and it meant so much to have the piece come out and be received so well. I feel sort of like my life is beginning right now.”
It was also important to her to play a queer character who is not bullied or struggling because of their queerness, but rather joyful.
“In my real life, although there are harder times, I feel like my queerness is a superpower and I feel like it’s what makes me super special and I love myself for that,” Benny says. “So I really love that Marco is also very much somebody who holds that very proudly.”
In addition to acting, Benny also is a musician, having recently released her first EP called “Swelter.”
“I’m trying to use this moment in my life as a stepping-off point,” she says. “I’m really hopeful to do movies and comedies and I’m currently writing my first album. So there are a lot of fun things going on. I’m hoping to move to bigger and better things as with each step.”
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