Miss Benny Cried When Kim Cattrall Joined Glamorous

In 2018, Miss Benny was thinking about quitting acting. She had just turned 19 and had been trying to land a mainstream role for nearly a decade. Rejections often came with an explanation: “It just wasn’t time” for teen LGBTQ+ content. And the actor didn’t want to hide her sexuality or gender expression. “I was never able to pass as straight, so I had a lot of hard times in auditions,” Miss Benny tells Bustle.

But then, she booked the role of Fuller House’s first out gay character, Kimmy’s 17-year-old event planning intern Casey, in a pair of Season 4 episodes. “That felt like such confirmation of ‘OK, if this show that every average family in America is watching is ready for a character like this, that has to be a sign that something’s around the corner for me.”

While filming Fuller House in 2018, she met the creator of her new Netflix series, Glamorous, an Ugly Betty meets The Devil Wears Prada style dramedy. Miss Benny stars as Marco Mejia, a gender-nonconforming makeup enthusiast who gets recruited by beauty mogul Madolyn Addison (played by Kim Cattrall) to work for her brand.

The part was something Miss Benny couldn’t even have dreamed of growing up in a “very conservative environment” near Dallas, Texas, where she “didn’t even know what the word ‘gay’ meant.”

While exploring her identity as a kid, she experimented with self-expression in secret. “I’d take my mom’s and sister’s makeup, and would wait until everyone was asleep,” says Miss Benny, who’s now 24. “Then I would go to church the next morning with mascara smudges, thinking no one could clock me, but those are the most important moments of my childhood. That was the time I felt I got to be fully myself.”

The actor found success on YouTube in 2010, after years of covertly seeking out role models such as Tyler Oakley, Michael Buckley, and America’s Next Top Model contestant Isis King. As part of her early videos, which earned hundreds of thousands of followers on the platform, Miss Benny used an ironic pop-culture icon as inspiration for her campy persona: Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones, played by Cattrall.

“I cried when I found out it was going to be Kim,” Miss Benny says of the Glamorous casting. “There are so many scenes that Kim and I have together where Marco is starstruck and in awe of Madolyn, and that was easy to do because I feel that way about Kim.”

Learn more about Miss Benny in her Bustle Booth questionnaire below.

In The Bustle Booth

What’s your coffee order?

If I have my anxiety together, an iced oat milk latte. If my anxiety is rampant, an iced matcha latte. Never hot, ’cause I’m one of those LGBTs.

What are the saved weather locations on your phone?

Los Angeles, Dallas, and Gravenhurst, [Ontario,] from when the Glamorous cast took a sexy little cabin vacation together on our time off.

What’s your sign?

I wish zodiac signs made sense to me because I’m a Pisces, which apparently makes a lot of sense to people when I tell them.

Favorite overused movie quote?

Every line of Cher’s dialogue from the scene in Burlesque where she’s doing Christina Aguilera’s makeup.

What was your favorite cartoon as a kid?

Avatar: The Last Airbender.

What’s one movie or TV show you’re currently obsessed with?

I’ve been watching the early seasons of Keeping Up With the Kardashians for the first time. As it gets closer to present day, I get less interested, so I think I’m just age regressing.

Who is your celeb idol?

Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande. You can imagine the effect that “Rain on Me” had on me.

If you had to be on a reality TV show, what would it be?

RuPaul’s Drag Race!!

Go-to karaoke song?

“Love on Top” by Beyoncé, so I can just scream.

What’s something that’s inspiring you lately?

Homemade smoothies.

What is something you would want people to say about you?

Gorgeous teeth.

Editor's note: Right before this article was published, Miss Benny came out publicly as a transgender woman who uses she/her pronouns. This article has been updated to reflect her new pronouns.