Alexandra Billings

Alexandra Scott Billings (born March 28, 1962) is an American actress, singer, and teacher. A trans woman, Billings played one of TV's first openly transgender characters in the 2005 film Romy and Michele: In the Beginning.

Early life Billings was born in Illinois into a multiracial family; she is of European American, African American, and Native American ancestry. Billings's father, Robert Billings, was a music teacher at Los Angeles Harbor College and the musical director for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, which influenced her interest in theater. She assisted, working backstage with Carol Burnett and Yul Brynner. She also appeared in Jesus Christ Superstar and The Roar of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd. In her early adult life, Billings struggled with homelessness and cocaine and opioid addiction, and for a time participated in sex work.

Career Stage work In the early 1980s, Billings worked under the stage name Shanté at the famed Baton Show Lounge in Chicago, Illinois, where she impersonated Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, and Liza Minnelli. Winning a series of beauty contests, she was named Miss Wisconsin, Miss New York, Miss Chicago, Miss Illinois, and Miss Florida. She also served as a judge of the Miss Continental pageant in 2000 and 2001.

Most of Billings' professional work has been in Chicago theaters, most notably The Bailiwick Theater, Light Opera Works, Court Theatre, and Steppenwolf Theatre. She has collaborated on plays with such notable authors as Larry Kramer, Tina Landau, and Jamie Pachino. She has received one Joseph Jefferson Award and five After Dark Awards for her work in Chicago Theatre. Her one-woman autobiographical show toured to Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and off Broadway. She is a former artistic associate of About Face Theatre. She performed in a pair of Billy Bermingham-written satirical farces at the Torso Theatre during the 1990s titled Shannen Doherty Shoots a Porno: A Shockumentary and Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack, starring in the latter.

Billings is also a professional singer who performs in theaters and nightclubs throughout the United States. She recorded her second CD, The Story Goes On, in 2003. She was a recipient of the New York MAC Hanson Award for Cabaret Artist of the Year in 2004.

Billings has appeared in an autobiographical show, "S/He and Me". In fall 2018, she also appeared in The Nap at Manhattan Theatre Club, and is one of the first openly trans people to be cast in a trans role on Broadway.

In September 2019, it was announced that Billings would play the role of Madame Morrible in the Broadway musical Wicked. She is the first openly transgender person to star in the show. After the closure of Broadway during the COVID-19 pandemic, Billings appeared with several other performers on Good Morning America in fall 2021 to announce the return of several shows to Broadway, including Wicked. Billings resumed performing the role of Morrible when Wicked reopened on Broadway in September 2021, and stayed in the show until January 30, 2022.

Television and film appearances In 2009, Chicago PBS affiliate WTTW produced a documentary about Billings' life and career, entitled Schoolboy to Showgirl: The Alexandra Billings Story. It aired on WTTW and nationally on other PBS stations, and is often rebroadcast during Pride Month on various stations.

She has appeared in the 2005 made-for-TV movie Romy and Michelle: A New Beginning. She has also played transgender characters in episodes of Karen Sisco, ER, Eli Stone and Grey's Anatomy.

In 2015, Billings appeared on season two, episode six of How to Get Away with Murder as Professor Jill Hartford.

In 2017, transgender actors and actresses, including Billings, were part of a video open letter aimed at Hollywood producers, written by Jen Richards, asking for more and improved roles for transgender people.

In 2018, Billings played a recurring role as judge Martha Wallace in the second season of Goliath.

Billings received wider recognition for her role as Davina in the Amazon series Transparent. The character was introduced in an early episode of season one in 2014 as a transgender friend of a recently out trans woman, and appeared throughout the show's run, including in its feature-length finale, Musicale Finale.

From 2020, Billings appeared in a recurring role as Robin, a transgender supervisor at Wellman Plastics and mentor to Darlene Conner on ABC's The Conners.

She had a recurring role as Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer in the 2022 Amazon Prime Video science fiction series The Peripheral.

She appeared in the 2023 film Queen Tut, for which she received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Lead Performance in a Comedy Film at the 12th Canadian Screen Awards in 2024.

Teaching She has taught Viewpoints, a theater method, at the Steppenwolf Summer School. She also taught at Lewis University, The University of Chicago, University of Illinois, the Illinois Theatre Convention, Act One Studios, and classes and workshops around the Chicago area, as well as the Steppenwolf School West in Los Angeles California.

Billings is a theater professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Before working at USC, she was an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach. She received her MFA from CSULB, and delivered the commencement speech for CSULB College of the Arts in 2015.

Activism Billings is an AIDS and LGBTQ activist and advocate for the equality of the LGBTQ community and has encouraged others to use their voices to create change within the LGBTQ community.

When delivering the commencement speech to the graduating class of the California State University, Long Beach in 2015, Billings once again emphasized the importance of voice when she told the students that it is their job is to speak loud, big, and wide in order to spread their voices. She also spoke to POZ magazine for a 2003 interview about life with HIV. In 2022, she published her memoir This Time for Me: A Memoir.

Filmography

Film Year Title Role Notes 2007 Socket Dr. Emily Andersen 2009 Stealth Veronica Terranova Short film 2010 Faux Herself 2017 Valley of Bones Kimberly 2018 Freelancers Anonymous Janey 2019 Paddleton Judy 2020 Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen HerselfDocumentary film 2023 Queen Tut Malibu Also executive producer

Television

Theatre