Laverne Cox Claims Starring in Prime Video's Clean Slate Was 'Triggering'; Reveals How Childhood Trauma Was Explored

Laverne Cox's role in Clean Slate has to do with more than just an acting challenge; it's a confrontation with her past. Read on to know the details.

Written by Ipshita Chakraborty , Entertainment Journalist

Updated on Feb 07, 2025 | 12:49 PM IST | 5.4K

CC: YouTube

Laverne Cox's new role in Clean Slate has been more of a personal conflict than an acting challenge. This 52-year-old actress managed to weave pieces of her past childhood trauma into the plot. She found the process emotionally exhausting rather than cathartic.

The Prime Video series focuses on Harry Slate (George Wallace), the loudmouth Alabama car wash owner, and his estranged child, Desiree (Cox), a trans woman who has returned home due to her art gallery in New York failing. Desperate to get back in life, she deals with her dad's strict worldview while trying to mend their already broken relationship.

It had become a place for Cox to heal through stories. She used difficult personal experiences and turned them into moments of humor, reconstructing past struggles into comedic material. However, revisiting the memories was the most challenging process. The show often triggered immense emotional responses during the process, making it one of the toughest performances of her career.

Cox told People that in Clean Slate, revisiting her past was "less cathartic and it wasn't healing."

She added, "It was triggering, almost every day. Some actors might disagree, but I think sometimes you have to be triggered as an actor to get to what the character might be feeling."

Certain elements in filming enhanced the emotional value of the movie. The scenes depicted inside a church provoked mixed feelings. The similarity of the setting design of her character's father's house with that of her own mother's house was discomforting, as Cox said.

This reinforced how well-established trauma is. Cox said, "The south is in the air and in the space, in the mentality. And trauma lives in ourselves; trauma lives in our nervous systems, and it's physical, and a lot of it's preverbal, and so that was all coming up. I didn't even fully understand it, but you use it."

To alleviate these feelings, she sought help from her acting coach and therapist. Cox realized that sometimes, in order to portray herself convincingly on stage, she had to dig up such awful, raw feelings that the process of dealing with them afterward was just as important.

The Orange is the New Black alum added, "Sometimes, to get to the truth of something really deep, raw, and catastrophic, to make that real, you have to re-traumatize yourself; you have to be triggered. But the trick is knowing how to get out of it."

Cox wants the show to resonate with anyone who has walked in her shoes despite the personal costs. She bases the story on her own and hopes it inspires connection and compassion.

Stream Laverne Cox's Clean Slate now available on Prime Video.