There’s an element of destiny for Laverne Cox with “Clean Slate,” her Prime Video sitcom series streaming Thursday.
An often hilarious autobiographical riff on her life as a trans woman, “Clean Slate” has Cox, 52, as Desiree Slate who returns to her Alabama birthplace after a decades-long absence to confront her carwash operator father Harry Slate (George Wallace) with her gender change.
The late Norman Lear – yes, that Norman Lear of “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons” and “Good Times,” – produced.
“It’s unbelievable. Still feels like a miracle,” Cox, in a Zoom interview, said.
It began seven years ago at LA’s Soho House with writer Dan Ewen, Cox and Cox’s manager. A 45-minute meeting lasted four hours.
“Dan had this idea, a reboot of ‘Sanford and Son’ with a daughter, with a little twist. He wrote a pilot in four days. The pilot was beautiful, funny. Hilarious! A lot of the elements in that first draft are in the series now.”
In a meeting with Lear, she recalled, “After an hour of talking about the show and about my life, Norman said, ‘I’ve learned more in the past hour that I didn’t know about life, that should have known about life.’
“And that was just hearing me talk about my experiences as a trans woman. When I was there, I felt safe.
“When I was young I would have to laugh things off, to just get through things. But there’s a lot of trauma from street harassment. A lot of trauma from just physical abuse as a child, from other children. Blah, blah,” she said, making a face.
“How do we find the laughter through that? And then, if I’m engaged in a healing process, there’s knowing laughter can happen with people with whom I’m healing. With my therapist, where the healing can be laughed at. It’s not all tears and trauma.
“Norman loved that! That I’ve been able to find humor through some of the difficulties of my life. We started developing this show further and then went out to pitch it.”
Cox shook her head. “We got ‘No’ everywhere. I’d given up. I thought, ‘Okay, they’re not buying trans. I need to put a pivot.’
“And on Norman’s 100th birthday in 2022, we found out we were picked up for series by Prime Video. It still feels like a miracle.”
Family hijinks, ace comic timing, a small town setting make “Clean Slate” very much now, only with a tough of nostalgia.
“It was really personal. Finding my comedy chops opposite a comedy legend was intimidating. And then there were just so many layers as Desiree, the character.”
“Clean Slate” streams on Prime Video Feb. 6