Billions Star Asia Kate Dillon Says They Must Return to Service Industry Because Acting Work Is “All But” Gone

Actor Asia Kate Dillon shared an urgent plea to find work in the service industry, saying that acting jobs have all but dried up for transgender and nonbinary talent in recent years.Best known for their groundbreaking role as Taylor Mason on the Showtime drama Billions, Dillon became the first nonbinary main character in a North American television series in 2017. Though they had worked in food service since the time they were 15, Dillon wrote in a Tuesday Instagram post that they were able to pursue acting full-time a decade ago. Now, they are sharing their food service résumé online in the hopes of returning to their original industry.“Like many, many performer colleagues of mine — particularly those of us who are trans/nonbinary/ gender nonconforming—- acting work has all but diminished, and I’m in need of service work once more,” they wrote in the October 20 post.They continued, “I love customer service. I love creating welcoming environments for people to relax in and connect with each other. I love food and drinks. I am passionate and curious, and a great teammate. I imagine the hurdle to reentry will be learning the new POS [point of sale] systems, but I’m a quick study.”Throughout the 2010s, following what Time magazine dubbed “The Transgender Tipping Point,” a crop of trans and nonbinary actors rose to notoriety. From Laverne Cox in Orange Is The New Black — a series in which Dillon themself had a small recurring role — to Elliot Fletcher’s role on Shameless and Trace Lysette’s arc on Transparent, trans representation hit the mainstream in an unprecedented way. That micro-boom arguably culminated in the FX series Pose, which advanced the careers of Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, and more.Dillon themself represented the first time many nonbinary people saw themselves on screen, particularly as a character who used they/them pronouns on a major television network before they had entered cisgender lexicon