“Mujhse dosti karogi?” Celina Matthews asks Rith Joshi in a striking scene in season 3 of Netflix’s college romance show, Mismatched. It’s the quintessential boy-meets-girl line, immortalised in countless Bollywood films. But in this moment, it’s a girl asking a trans masc person.
Rith’s reaction defies Bollywood cliché—he flinches and nearly walks away. Not because he is not interested in Celina’s offer of friendship, but because the question misgenders his identity—one that he has grappled with all his life.
Later, Celina corrects herself: “Mujhse dosti karega?” Rith’s face lights up. This subtle shift in gendered Hindi vocabulary becomes a quiet, powerful moment of recognition and acceptance.
When we first meet Rith, he dreams aloud about becoming Neymar one day. Not an ace footballer like him professionally, but a man. It is a desire he shares only with himself, in the privacy of his room. In the following scene, however, his mother playfully drapes a sari over him, making him visibly uncomfortable. She is still holding onto memories of Rithika.
A tech aficionado, Rith’s character is a gentler version of Neo from The Matrix and a more subdued Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. His presence in Mismatched is a watershed moment for trans masc representation in mainstream Indian cinema. And it‘s not just that he exists—he is a well-rounded character. His identity is not a plot twist, and he doesn‘t reinforce the victim stereotype. His identity isn’t a twist or a tragic trope; he’s not a comic sidekick or a victim. Rith is a driven, introspective student with a tender romantic arc, navigating college life and cybersecurity crises—all while being openly and visibly trans masc.
The celebration of masculinity is central to the appeal of Indian cinema. Over the years our screens have been graced by all kinds of men: Shah Rukh Khan as the vulnerable romantic longing for his lover or as the coach of the women’s hockey team who defends his patriotism; Dhanush being the boy next door and axing down privileged caste villains in the same breath; Allu Arjun as a bearded, swaggering red sandalwood smuggler on a rampage for justice; Hrithik Roshan at his sculpted best regardless of whether he played the gentle Akbar or a charismatic conman.
The common denominator in all these roles is not just the male form, but the cis-male gaze that defines masculinity on screen. There is little space for masculinity that is trans, non-binary or butch—identities that do not solely rely on machismo, chiselled physiques, or heteronormative stereotypes of desire, but are equally valid ways of being masculine.
In an era where nuanced portrayals of trans femme characters are starting to appear in Hindi films and TV shows, trans masculinity continues to remain a step too far. What will it take for this wall to fall?
Invisible by Design
Indian cinema has a narrow understanding of masculinity, according to Varsha Panikar, a trans non-binary writer-director and co-founder of Star Hopper, a Mumbai-based production house and creative studio.
“Masculinity is still built on caste, cis-normativity, and colonial baggage. The same figures repeat—wounded man-child, the aggressive hero, the self-destructive romantic. Everything is rooted in control and entitlement,” Varsha said. “However, for me, masculinity is fluid and resists the binary, narrow colonial ideas of gender we were fed growing up.”
Even within queer narratives, Varsha added, straight templates dominate. “Anything outside the hero-heroine-sidekick triangle gets called too niche.” That is ‘coded exclusion,’ they said. “Butch, trans masc, and gender nonconforming characters are either kept out, or when they do appear, they are often just as hypersexual, tragic, or toxic as the men around them. Our desires are either erased or distorted.”
Shailaja Padindala, a queer filmmaker based in Karnataka, views the right to be recognised as masculine as a proxy for something deeper: freedom. “The industry resists depicting markers of butch or trans masc expression—especially when they don’t conform to the grooming norms dictated by heteronormative beauty standards. Things like choosing not to wax or forgoing makeup,” she said. “This reveals a deeper belief of the society at large: that freedom of expression rests only with the [cis] man.”
Mismatched’s nuanced and affirming portrayal of Rith’s trans masc identity was largely down to the trans woman who headed the show’s writing team: Gazal Dhaliwal. “Robinson’s Rith was not written as a LGBTQ+ token character,” Gazal told queerbeat. “Rith was a nuanced, fully-realised person—a tech genius, a romantic lead, an individual with a character arc—whose trans masc identity was central to him, but not the only thing about him,” Gazal added that her transness helps her bring nuance and visibility to trans narratives that cisgender writers can rarely replicate. In the past, she has articulated the need to be referred to as a trans writer, not just any screenwriter, precisely because of the way her transness informs her writing.
The representation of trans people in Indian cinema has improved over the years. From being comic relief and the carriers of vicious stereotypes, the depiction of trans lives has shifted towards fuller characters. Sadak (1991) introduced the character of Maharani, a violent transgender person who reinforced a fear-mongering archetype, followed by a sari-clad character played by Ashutosh Rana in Sangharsh (1999) whose iconic scream became the stuff of nightmares.
More recently, films and shows like Paava Kadhaigal (2020) and Taali (2023) have attempted to reframe trans representation to varying degrees of success. Both films were criticised for featuring cis actors in trans roles, but they have also won plaudits. The former featured Kalidas Jayaram as a trans woman in a moving rural drama. Despite the tragic narrative, the performance was lauded for its dignity. The latter, a biopic of activist Shreegauri Sawant starring Sushmita Sen, was celebrated for its emotional depth and broad visibility.
However, whatever trans representation there may be in Indian cinema is still overwhelmingly trans femme. Darpan Shrivastava, a Mumbai-based casting director, told queerbeat that the success of Super Deluxe (2019) and Made in Heaven (2019–), both of which featured trans women characters, is heartening. To him, the popularity of shows and movies that moved beyond the harmful stereotypes from not too long ago proves that audiences are not resisting trans femme narratives. “However, it is quite concerning that none of these features trans masc characters,” Darpan said.
This imbalance, say filmmakers, has less to do with audience rejection and more to do with cultural familiarity. “There’s a sense of recognition with transfeminine individuals in Indian society,” noted Sridhar Rangayan, whose film The Pink Mirror (2002) on transsexuals remains banned in India due to the Central Board of Film Certification’s terming it vulgar and offensive. “That familiarity and visibility make us more accepting of them. In contrast, Indian society has always turned a blind eye towards trans masc individuals. And what society turns a blind eye to gets erased on screen as well.”
That invisibility is self-reinforcing. As screenwriter Gazal points out, even in writers’ rooms, conversations around trans representation almost always begin and end with trans women. “The reason is clear: representation happens when you watch queer people on screen. Take the case of gay male characters. They evolved from campy supporting subplots to leading men. The same shift needs to happen for trans masc narratives, too.”
But such a shift is harder when the industry cannot recognise trans masc or butch identities as aesthetic or narrative capital. “Butch, trans masc, don’t fit the industry’s poster-friendly frame,” Varsha said “We’re seen as too unfamiliar. And even now, we’re rarely the ones steering our own stories. We’re brought in as consultants, not authors.”
While mainstream cinema sidelines these identities, Indian documentary filmmakers have long been documenting trans masc and non-binary lives. Sridhar, who is also the founder-festival director of the recently concluded Kashish Pride Film Festival, has featured such stories for over a decade. His 2014 documentary Purple Skies, touted as the first ever LGBTQ+ film to be telecast on Doordarshan, included trans masc voices at a time when the term itself was unheard of. His streak continued with the documentary short Raja Bhau (2023), produced by The Humsafar Trust and Solaris Pictures. The short was about a trans masc person’s journey of acceptance by his family. In 2025, Kashish spotlighted Outerlands and Close to You, starring Elliot Page (the Hollywood actor who publicly confirmed his identity as a trans man in December 2020), two international films with trans masc leads, showcasing how trans masc voices matter in other film industries.
But as Varsha put it: “In India, there’s already very little funding for narrative fiction. Internationally, sometimes it’s enough to just tell a good story. Here, you still have to explain why a trans masc character deserves to lead.”
There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon, though. Upcoming films like Lala & Poppy are beginning to challenge conventional portrayals of masculinity on screen. A love story between a trans woman and a trans man, the film is written and directed by Kaizad Gustad and produced by Bobby Bedi, who also backed Fire (1995), one of India’s earliest lesbian dramas. The project was recently showcased at the Cannes Film Market. Another example is Shailaja’s short film Love and Let Love (2024), now streaming on YouTube. It follows a mother coming to terms with her daughter’s sexual orientation and features Malini Jeevarathinam as a butch lover—a refreshing and nuanced portrayal of queer intimacy.
Beyond the indie spaces of film festivals and YouTube shorts, nuanced representation is gradually beginning to emerge even in mainstream filmmaking. Malini, who identifies as gender non-conforming, recently played a queer police officer in Inspector Rishi (2024), a Tamil-language horror crime drama series on Amazon Prime Video. “Ten years ago, I used to dream about a cinematic workspace where someone like me could simply exist, and this was that kind of set,” they said.
Economics of convenience
Gazal believes that nuanced representation, which begins during the writing process, often loses steam during the casting process. “Casting agents can be a bit complacent about finding the right actors. They play it safe by accessing the available limited pool of talent.”
Playing safe is a catchphrase that Darpan, the Mumbai-based casting director quoted earlier in this piece, has heard many times from production studio heads: “I would love to hire a trans masc actor, but there is pressure to hire someone more bankable, aka cis actors. Producers find it easier to hire popular cis faces than be too ‘experimental’ by hiring trans masc actors.” This means that trans masc identities get invisibilised, even before they make it to the audition room.
Darpan added that there are no formal databases tracking actor identities by gender and that casting calls for queer actors are far and few. “The default is always to hire a cis actor,” he said. Vijay Sethupathi’s portrayal of a trans woman in the Tamil film Super Deluxe (2019) is a case in point.
Would Darpan ever have a casting call for only trans masc actors? “Why not?” he replied. “But I have never come across any scripts with a trans masc character yet. Let’s start by writing their stories. We can get to casting later.”
While portrayals of trans lives by cis actors like Vijay in Super Deluxe, Kalidas in Paava Kadhaigal and Sushmita in Taali have garnered praise, should such roles be played by trans people instead? It’s a question that’s often asked but doesn’t result in a clear answer. The industry seems divided.
Gazal echoes a similar sentiment when speaking about A Monsoon Date (2019), a short film she wrote starring Konkona Sen Sharma, a cis actor, as a trans woman: “Her popularity got us the budget, and we were able to tell a trans woman’s story.” But she also applauds those rare moments of accurate representation, such as Paatal Lok‘s (2020) casting of Manipuri transgender actor Mairembam Ronaldo Singh as Cheeni, a well-rounded character grappling with the injustice meted out to the trans community, while also navigating an alleged murder accusation and a romantic track.
While it is true that a big-name cis actor can help raise funds for a production and pull audiences in, Indian cinema is so used to casting cis actors in trans roles that it continues to happen even in cases where there is no financial pressure driving such decisions. Varsha pointed out that while one can understand the casting of Sushmita as the lead in Taali for commercial reasons, the supporting characters who were supposed to be hijra folks were also played by cis actors. “That is how invisibilisation begins—because even in the rare trans roles that get written, regardless of how small they are, you don’t want to cast trans actors.”
True representation isn’t just about visibility on screen, though; it is also about how safely these stories are created behind the scenes.
Varsha argued that there is a pressing need for change on this front. “Big studios and OTT platforms with the financial resources must invest in queer sensitisation and mentorship for writers and directors, many of whom are oblivious to the basic know-how around LGBTQ+ lives,” they said. Without these shifts, they believe that representation will continue to be performative. “We also need accountability when harm happens. Harm can look like hostility from crew members or outright disrespect.”
The road ahead
Are trans actors hopeful that their lives and masculinities will be reflected often and authentically in cinema? For many, hope isn’t something they passively wait for; it’s something they are actively building.
One such example is of Shailaja, who grew tired of waiting for stories that mirrored her lived experience. She directed Naanu Ladies (2021), a tale of two women in love, starring a butch-masculine character. Though she found it difficult to find a producer in her home turf, she didn’t let that rejection deter her. Eventually, Just Like That Films, a UK-based, Indian woman-led production house, agreed to produce it with a modest budget of ₹35 lakhs. “I want to collaborate with many more trans masc actors in the future and make more movies,” she said.
Varsha shares the optimism. Their latest project, Operation: Gulzaar, featuring two trans non-binary, masc-presenting characters, received the runner-up, albeit modest, grant of ₹75,000 under the Kashish Q Drishti Grant at this year’s Kashish Film Festival, supported by filmmakers and producers such as Renuka Shahane, Abhishek Chaubey, Guneet Monga Kapoor, and Vikramaditya Motwane. For Varsha, this kind of institutional backing marks an important shift: not just toward queer representation, but toward queer authorship, particularly when it comes to stories that redefine masculinity.
So far, though, these incremental changes have not made their way into mainstream cinema. The small wins have largely been confined to independent films, film festivals, YouTube shorts, and select OTT platforms. In mainstream productions, from Super Deluxe to Taali, regardless of how powerful or problematic the narratives are, trans characters continue to be played by cis actors. Even the few exceptions, such as Made in Heaven, have only spotlighted transfeminine characters. As Gazal noted, producers rarely show interest in trans masc narratives; their focus remains limited to transfeminine characters. Casting director Darpan told queerbeat that he is more than willing to issue casting calls for trans masc actors, but only if producers or directors allow it. Nearly everyone interviewed for this story agreed that meaningful change will remain out of reach until mainstream cinema chooses to embrace this diversity.
Asawari Jagushte, a trans non-binary director-producer-editor and Varsha’s co-founder at Star Hopper believes that this widespread change can only begin with the industry and audiences embracing a radical reimagining of masculinity itself, one that untethers it from the cis male gaze. “To me, masculinity is not about dominance, control, or performance. It can be curious, gentle, fluid, and relational. Sometimes it’s visible. Sometimes it’s quiet. It need not be a fixed trait,” they said.
Asawari, who views masculinity as something they had to define for themselves (closer to what feels right in their body), has a dream: A movie with a charismatic trans masc lead with complexity. “Think James Bond or John Wick, but trans masc.”
The blueprint exists. The talent is ready. But is the industry?