CHICAGO — The second half of the Wachowski sibling filmmaking team behind "The Matrix" and other sci-fi blockbusters opened up about being a transgender woman Tuesday to the Windy City Times, one of the Chicago's longest-standing LGBT news outlets.
Lilly Wachowski, sibling to Lana Wachowski, who earlier came out as a transgender woman four years ago, wrote in a letter to Windy City Times that a reporter from the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, pressured her recently for a story about her gender identity — though she had not yet publicly come out on her own as transgender.
She described realizing that because she was a famous filmmaker — known for hits like "V For Vendetta," "Cloud Atlas," and the sci-fi series "Sense8" (which has filmed in Chicago) — she knew she would have to eventually be open with her fans about her journey to be true to her identity.
But when approached by the Daily News, she said she felt worried about losing control of her narrative. So she turned to her hometown's Windy City Times:
"After he had given me his card, and I closed the door it began to dawn on me where I had heard of the Daily Mail. It was the "news" organization that had played a huge part in the national public outing of Lucy Meadows, an elementary school teacher and trans woman in the UK...And now here they were, at my front door, almost as if to say —
'There's another one! Let's drag 'em out in the open so we can all have a look!'"
Wachowski's letter goes on to explain that she is transgender and has transitioned.
The Wachowskis were born in Chicago and graduated from Whitney Young High School.
Read Lilly's full letter to Windy City Times here.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
