Candis Cayne is an American actress and performance artist. Cayne performed in New York City nightclubs in drag since the 1990s, and came out as transgender in 1996; Cayne came to national attention in 2007 for portraying transgender mistress Carmelita on ABC’s prime time drama Dirty Sexy Money.
Below are 10 things women should know about her:
1. Cayne is the first transgender actress to play a recurring transgender character in primetime. She is perhaps best known for her recurring role as the Fairy Queen on the fantasy series The Magicians.
2. Cayne has a fraternal twin brother named Dylan. Their parents taught at a Waldorf School, and the family lived on campus.
3. She graduated from Henry Perrine Baldwin High School in Hawaii in 1989 and then spent a year in Los Angeles, where she trained as a dancer.
4. Candis Cayne then moved to New York in the early 1990s, making a name for herself as a choreographer and drag performer. About three years after her arrival in NYC, Cayne realized that the term transgender described how she felt about herself.
5. From 2017 to 2018, Cayne played the role of The Fairy Queen in the Syfy series The Magicians.
6. Cayne appeared in the 2020 documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen. She also hosted the third edition of Werq the World‘s livestreamed series.
7. Cayne began transitioning circa 1996. Cayne has stated, “I’m not trying to be a spokeswoman for the transgender community; I just want to be looked at as a living, breathing, happy human being.” She calls the LGBT community “the last great minority” and supports LGBT+ rights charity GLAAD.
8. In August 2015, Candis Cayne teamed up with the global LGBT social network MOOVZ as the new global creative director.
9. For over eight years, ending in 2010, Candis Cayne was in a relationship with DJ Marco McDermott, to whom she referred as her husband. During that time, she helped raise McDermott’s daughter, Satori, from a previous relationship.
10. In 2016, during season 2 of the reality show I Am Cait, Cayne explored the possibility of adopting as a single mom.
