Josie Totah

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Josie Totah

^[1]Josie Totah an American actress also known as J. J. Totah (born August 5, 2001) is an immensely talented actress, writer and Comedian with a gift for bringing dynamic characters to life. As she fearlessly evolves her body of work with each new project, Totah is fast proving to be one of Hollywood's most engaging and sought after young talents. Totah has been recognized by numerous prestigious publications including being named to The Hollywood Reporter's Top 30 Stars Under 18, Forbes 30 Under 30 (Hollywood), Teen Vogue's 21 Under 21, Out Magazine OUT100 and Seventeen Magazine's 6 Women Under 21 Who Are Changing the World. ^[6] She took to her twitter account to oped about being transgender. ^[14] For years, Josie Totah was pigeonholed as a flamboyant, young boy in acting role after acting role.

Career

Josie Totah started her acting career in 2012 when she appeared in the first production for AwesomenessTV as "Lil' Dictator".

In 2013, she began appearing as Stuart Wooten, a boy with a crush on series regular Zuri Ross, in the Disney Channel Original Series Jessie. Totah has guest starred on the TV shows, New Girl, 2 Broke Girls, and Liv and Maddie.

Also in 2013, Totah played the main role in the ABC comedy Back in the Game.

In 2015, she featured in 4 episodes of the sixth season Glee as the youngest member ever of the New Directions.

Josie recently starred in Amazon's half hour pilot, Good People (film), created by Whitney Cummings and Lee Daniels. The pilot focuses on three generations of women, played by Lisa Kudrow, Whitney Cummings and Totah, all working in the ombudsman's office of a college. Josie is Talulah, the smart, brash Generation Z voice of social injustice. The pilot also co-stars Greg Kinnear, Martin Short and Ian Harding.

Totah is also an LGBTQ activist who regularly appears on panels discussing LBGTQ rights and inclusion of LGBT chaLGBTQ characters in film and television. Totah was recognized by the Human Rights Campaign who honored her with the prestigious Visibility Award in 2018 and the Upstander Award in 2019. She was named by Out Magazine to Out100. Totah is also a celebrity Ambassador for GLAAD and GLSEN where she serves as a member of the GLSEN Game Change Council. In addition to her career in front of camera, Totah is a television and film writer. At the age of 15, she sold her first television pitch to Universal Television/NBC.

Personal

On August 20, 2018, Josie Totah came out open to declare to be a Transgender woman.

She grew up in Davis, CA, also changed her first name to Josie from Joseph.

^[5] Before revealing her gender identity, the Disney star formerly known as J.J.

Totah took a break; she's back with a new style and sense of self.

Totah entered the industry as male-appearing because she had to.

Not only did the press assume that the characters she was playing reflected who she was on the inside, but the fact that she’d played the token gay character so much meant that she’d inadvertently typecast herself.

^[13] When she was really young, growing up in a small town in Northern California, people would just assume I was gay.

On the playground, I was the type of kid who wanted to sing with the girls, not play soccer with the boys.