GE N DE R NONCONFORMI NG AN D FABU LOUS

On the Netflix series Glamorous, Miss Benny stars as a department store makeup artist who lands his dream job working for a beauty mogul played by Kim Cattrall

I n early development, Marco Mejia, the gender-nonconforming queer character at the heart of the new series Glamorous — set inside the world of the makeup business — was conceived as a much younger character. “Literally Marco was in high school,” recalls Miss Benny, who plays him on the show that debuts June 20. But over the four years that the actor (and former YouTube star) was attached to the project, “it got retooled and written so many times and is at a different network [Netflix] — and now Marco’s just like an out-and-proud-living homosexual,” says the L.A.-based actor, 24, who grew up in Denton, Texas, and has had roles on Fuller House, Love, Victor and American Horror Story. “When we shot the pilot, I had to shave like three times a day to somehow look like I was 17. And this time, they were like, ‘No, you can just be you.’ ” In the escapist fish-out-of-water comedy — “Our characters never face any homophobia or transphobia or any prejudice from the outside world,” says Miss Benny — Marco is living at home with his mom, who wants him to get a real job. He’s working part-time at a department store selling makeup and posting beauty tutorials on his YouTube channel (which has a witheringly small number of followers) when in walks Madolyn Addison (Kim Cattrall), the founder of an eponymous beauty brand. Soon enough, he’s hired as her second assistant. When Miss Benny found out that Cattrall had been cast in the role (after the project moved to Netflix), “I cried because I was just so excited. She’s an icon,” says the actor, who is also a singer and recently released his first EP, Swelter. Miss Benny — who admits to a serious fixation on TikTok beauty videos (“I see a makeup trend, like dewy balletcore, and I’m buying it on Sephora immediately”) — says he’s over the moon that the show spotlights a character like Marco, with whom he feels kinship. “There are so many unique challenges you face as somebody who is gender nonconforming, specifically when you’re assigned male at birth and you present very feminine,” says Miss Benny, adding that a slew of characters on the series are LGBTQ+. “Almost every single character on the show is a different shade of queer. I hope that people will watch the show and want to give more opportunities to people like me and people like the rest of the cast because we had so much fun making it. It’s just such a good time.”

Miss Benny with Kim Cattrall in a scene from Glamorous.