Actor J.D. Pardo discusses the profound effects of his emotionally draining role as slain transgendered teen Gwen Araujo in Lifetime's A Girl Like Me.

By Ken Knox

For actor J.D. Pardo, who portrays real-life slain transgendered teen Gwen Araujo in this month's A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story, taking the part wasn't just a way to gain notoriety. “I'm a student of acting, and for me, what I've seen is a lot of actors who get into acting because it's a vehicle,” he states. “And now, with what a lot of the studios are putting out, it's really all about the money. And for me, I've always considered [being an actor], like, being an observer of life.”

Pardo got to observe one side of life that he never thought he'd see when he began researching the transgender community to play Gwen. “I had my own questions, just like a lot of us do, about the transgender community, about gender identity, about all that,” he confesses. “When I got the part, I dressed up [in women's clothing] and walked around Studio City, and it was really hard emotionally and very interesting to see the looks that people would give me. I really got to see how much that hurt to have people stare at you and really judge you. I really connected with the loneliness and being oversensitive to everything. I really connected to the heart, the human being of Gwen.”

In addition to being emotionally exhausting, the role was physically demanding as well, requiring Pardo to lose weight, “tuck” for up to 12 hours a day and wear a painfully restrictive corset to give his athletic body a feminine quality. But Pardo says that the physical demands paled in comparison to the daunting task of recreating the life of Araujo, who was beaten to death by three acquaintances after they discovered that she was a boy.

“You want to be sensitive and get it right,” Pardo explains. “[Gwen's mother] Sylvia came up to Vancouver during filming and spent a day with us, and when I met her, I felt in a way that I was insulting her and insulting the situation. I felt I wasn't doing it justice because I wasn't portraying the realness of what happened. And she was just so great. She just looked at me and said, 'Honey, I know you're hurting. I know you're tired. I know you're beat up. But you're doing a great job and I support you. We all support you.' And when she said that, it just made all the difference.”

Though he says he is not the best judge of his own acting (“I really don't watch anything that I do,” he claims), Pardo does say that he got to see a rough cut of the film, and was pleased enough with the results. “I hold myself to a high standard, but I think I did OK. But I'm more excited that I was blessed with this opportunity to learn something on a human level, on a personal level, and on a professional level. I was more challenged as a person than as an actor, and on that, I feel great.”

With no other projects immediately lined up, Pardo says he's taking some time off to recover from the experience. “It was a very emotional thing for me and very deep on a personal level, and I'm just enjoying my time and letting my eyebrows grow back out, and putting on the weight that I lost and enjoying eating again.” Meanwhile, though he acknowledges the significance of playing a transgender role in a town where actors are overly concerned with image, he is refreshingly humble about how his performance as Gwen might inspire others. “I don't know if people would look at little ol' me and say, 'Yeah, he did it, so I can do it, too.' I think when you see actors and actresses like Hillary Swank and Felicity Huffman and Philip Seymour Hoffman [playing these types of roles], it shows you that talent will always rise.

“I think you have to challenge yourself and go where it's uncomfortable,” he adds after a beat. “You should never be afraid to play a role that challenges you and that you feel your heart is into.”

A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story debuts on the Lifetime Network on June 19. Check your local listings for times.

Gloria Allred: Transgender Defender

by Karen Ocamb

Sometimes justice demands more than a reckoning; it demands that a story be told. Famed attorney Gloria Allred, long a crusader for LGBT equality and victims' rights, found just such a case representing the mother and family of transgender 17-year-old Gwen Araujo, who was brutally murdered on Oct. 3, 2002. Allred brought Gwen's story to Lifetime.

“I'm happy that, to a large extent, there was justice for Gwen,” says Allred, who co-produced the made-for-TV movie. The first trial in Alameda County Superior Court, during which the defendants used a “trans panic” defense, ended in June 2004 with a deadlocked jury. In the second trial, two assailants pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter while the other two were found guilty of second degree murder, though inexplicably the jury did not find the murder to be a hate crime.

The movie, Allred says, is “personal more than political. It's a story about a mother's love.” And it's a story about a family that “found the courage to endure Gwen's disappearance and death, then the preliminary hearing and two trials. They have become important supporters of transgender rights. They've taken this tragedy and helped to educate others by talking about Gwen's story. Sylvia Guerrero [Gwen's mother] has spoken in many schools and others in the family have spoken out as well. I think that's admirable.

“It's hard enough to be a teenager when one wears one's gender uniform and conforms to what one's peers expect,” Allred continues. “But it's an extra challenge for a girl like Gwen to be the person she was and to live honestly as who she was. There are many adults who do not understand a transgender teen. I think it's probably even harder for a teenager to understand. What frame of reference do they have? They generally have none. So she was courageous—not living a lie which might or might not have been easier for her.

“Transgender individuals are a minority and they are a misunderstood minority and ignorance kills,” Allred says. “So knowledge is power and we have to educate people of all ages to accept and understand what tolerance means and that there will be serious consequences and accountability for violence inflicted on minorities. Killing should never have been an option [for the defendants]. Throwing [Gwen] up against a wall, throwing a soup can at her head, tying a rope around her neck, strangling her and taking her body up to the High Sierras, burying her, leaving her mother and the rest of her family to worry for weeks about where she was and what had happened to her. Not knowing was very, very painful, traumatic. How dare they! The good news is they didn't' away with it.”

Allred also recounts Gwen Araujo's story in her book, Fight Back and Win: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Injustice—And How You Can Win Your Own Battles.