In the new CBS legal drama, Doubt, Laverne Cox stars as Cameron Wirth, an Ivy League-educated lawyer who fights injustice in the courtoom. Doubt premieres Wednesday, February 15 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS. 

This new role is the next big step in Cox’s already illustrious and celebrated career as an actress and advocate. With her Emmmy nomination for Orange is the New Black, her appearance on the cover of TIME magazine’s “The Transgender Tipping Point” issue, her Daytime Emmy Award for MTV’s Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, and producing credit for the outstanding documentary Free CeCe, Cox has taken the media by storm over the past four years. Her talent and passion for education and advocacy have been driving forces behind so many of the recent improvements in the way media portrays trans people.

In an interview with TV Insider, Cox says she always wanted to play a lawyer on television, and her character Cameron Wirth will make that a reality. It is truly groundbreaking that in a workplace legal drama like Doubt, Cox will play a lawyer who just happens to be transgender.

Too often, transgender characters in media are limited to the transition narrative, where the sole focus of their storyline is on their physical transition. Not in Doubt. This is the kind of casual, matter-of-fact inclusion of trans people that GLAAD hopes becomes the standard for trans media representations. Media should reflect the reality that trans people are part of the fabric of everyday life, which includes seeing us at work, in school, in relationships, and participating in everyday life. 

The authenticity of Wirth’s character and storyline on the show can also be attributed to the team behind the creation of Doubt. Husband-and-wife writing duo Joan Rater and Tony Phelan are the parents of Tom Phelan, a young trans actor who appeared on Freeform’s The Fosters. In addition to having a trans child, Phelan and Rater made the decision to bring trans author Imogen Binnie into the show’s writing room. In an interview with OUT magazine, Rater and Phelan said: “We really wanted to put a character on TV who was trans, but the story wasn’t about that. Cameron is smart and funny and a brilliant lawyer, and she also is trans. We’re lucky enough to have a transgender child, and we’re really excited to tell stories for him.”

Binnie, whose novel Nevada earned a Lambda Literary Award nomination in 2014, said of her first-time TV writing gig, “The most rewarding thing for me is putting a smart, successful, and complex Black trans woman on television, and that the stories we’re telling for her don’t feel like stories we’ve seen on television before.” 

The first season will also feature appearances by Alexandra Grey as Delila, a working-class transgender woman who finds herself at the wrong place at the wrong time, and Herstory creators Jen Richards and Angelica Ross as Wirth’s friends, all of whom are trans actresses. 

Tune in to Doubt Wednesday, February 15 at 10 p.m. ET, and follow the cast live on Twitter during the premiere.