Emira D’Spain Slays as Bravo’s First Trans Cast Member On New Series Next Gen NYC

Emira D’Spain makes herstory as Bravo’s first full-time transgender cast member, joining Gia Giudice, Brooks Marks, and Riley Burruss on new Bravo series Next Gen NYC.

via: Them

The series was announced on Tuesday, complete with a two-and-a-half-minute-long trailer. Newsweek confirmed that same day that D’Spain will be the first openly trans person to appear in an official main role on any Bravo show, with a spokesperson for the network noting that it was “important” for the series to “highlight the diversity and authenticity of this generation.”

The basic premise of Next Gen is that the children of various Bravo stars are now all grown up and Taking On The Big Apple™. But don’t worry — while four people out of the 10-person cast are Real Housewives progeny, the other six, including D’Spain, are newcomers.

D’Spain might be new to Bravo, but she’s been in the spotlight for a minute. In 2022, she made history as the first openly trans Black woman to serve as a spokesmodel for Victoria’s Secret, and also served as the beauty director at Paper. She’s garnered over a million followers on TikTok with beauty tutorials and “get ready with me” videos.

Though D’Spain’s social media presence is polished, she seems more than willing and ready to be the kind of chaotic reality TV personality that we all live for — at least according to her posts on Instagram and TikTok, both of which have captions about her being “messy.” (Her closing line in the Next Gen trailer? “Ugh, I love being messy.”) She’s yet to comment directly on making reality TV history, but that’s in line with the way that she exists as a public figure anyway.

In a 2023 interview with E! Online, the model said that she intentionally doesn’t make being trans a core focus of her online presence, though she’ll occasionally mention it in videos.

“It’s so crazy that people have such a preconceived notion about like, what trans-ness is in their mind,” she told the publication. “And me existing and sharing my life and the content and everything is doing so much to help broaden their perspective of that.”

The rest of Next Gen also seems like it will be decently queer, judging from the trailer. Toward the end, there’s a conversation between Real Housewives of Salt Lake City dad Seth Marks and a new cast member in which Marks says that he’s “trying to get to” pansexuality (????!!!?!!?!). And of course, there’s Marks’ son, Brooks Marks, also of RHOSLC fame, who looks like he’ll be getting lots of airtime in the new series.

Next Gen NYC premieres on Bravo on June 3.