‘Supergirl’ Actress Nicole Maines Addresses Growing Up Trans & Amazing Journey in New Memoir

Yellowjackets actress and transgender activist Nicole Maines is speaking up – publishing her prose and thoughts in a revealing book this fall.

In an interview with People, Maines detailed her latest venture: It Gets Better…Except When It Gets Worse, a tell-all memoir on her remarkable journey to Hollywood including landing her first major role in the CW’s Supergirl, playing television’s first live-action transgender superhero.

Penguin Random House

“For a long time, I tried and struggled to find a space to use my voice and share my thoughts,” Maines told People. “I attempted to use my social media platforms for that purpose, but I found more times than not that I was running up against an immovable wall of online trolls and bigots. I needed a way to be able to say what I needed to say without inviting a pointless debate over my own humanity.”

Through the lens of her seemingly “happy ending” after booking a lead role in a major production (per the memoir’s official description), Maines dives into her trans childhood in rural Maine, the imposition of insidious messaging on queerness and femininity, and the disillusionment of said “happy ending.”

Since her induction to television in Hollywood in 2018 in Season 4 of Supergirl as Nia Nal (or Dreamer), Maine has been searching for the opportunity to speak her mind to her newfound audience.

Nicole Maines as Dreamer on right. Dean Buscher / The CW

“I was able to do that with this book,” the actress and author continues. “Over the course of writing It Gets Better, what started as a memoir became a collection of the thoughts, feelings and fears that occupy my brain while I try to keep my grip on my own sanity as the world devolves around me. It’s more fun than I make it sound.”

After her time on Supergirl, Maines went on to appear in the Emmy-nominated drama series Yellowjackets as well as Freeform’s Good Trouble, CW’s The Flash, and the 2019 horror film Bit. She was also nominated for a GLAAD Media Award in 2023 and named one of Variety’s 2022 “Power of Young Hollywood” honorees.

Nicole Maines as Lisa in “Yellowjackets.” Kailey Schwerman / Showtime

It Gets Better, which is being published by The Dial Press at Penguin Random House, details Maines’ coming out a young age, fighting for a landmark court case in Maine before graduating high school, getting “The Surgery™,” and achieving her goals in Hollywood.

Related

Book Lovers, Rejoice! All the Novels Making the Leap to TV in 2024

The book aims to remind readers that “sometimes, a happy ending is only the beginning of the story,” as reads the book’s official description, and how just existing is “actually pretty hard!”

It Gets Better…Except When It Gets Worse is available for pre-order anywhere you purchase your books for its set release on Oct. 15, 2024.