January 21 2026, 08:15 
Anti-trans bigots are losing their heads over some creative casting on Broadway.
Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender influencer and lightning rod at the center of the 2024 Bud Light boycott, has been cast as Anne Boleyn, the second, beheaded wife of English monarch King Henry XIII in the long-running Broadway show, Six the Musical.
Related
Dylan Mulvaney says meeting Kristin Chenoweth at age 12 changed her life
The musical retells the wives’ lives in a modern pop concert context. The historical reimagining of the women’s tales won the 2022 Tony Award for Best Original Score.
“Show some royal love to Queen Dylan Mulvaney, who will be joining the #SIXBroadway 5.0 cast as Anne Boleyn,” producers announced last week.
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today
Posting about the casting, Mulvaney shared: “YAY BROADWAY! so happy my bway debut is playing a fellow polarizing woman in this perfect musical next month I hope you will all come watch me live my dream I am SO HAPPY I CANT STOP SMILING.”
MAGA acolytes, however, did not share Mulvaney’s joy.
A deluge of transphobic comments and hate forced the show’s producers to change the show’s X social media account to private in an attempt to shut down transphobic comments.
“A man is playing a woman in a musical about celebrating women and ‘girl power’. Can’t make this up,” posted notorious anti-trans troll Chaya Raichik at Libs of Tiktok, misgendering Mulvaney.
“They’ve made Anne Boleyn trans. You know, Anne Boleyn. The British queen who was slandered by her abusive husband and then beheaded because she gave birth to a girl. Yeah, that Anne Boleyn,” posted another aggrieved bigot. “She’s being played by a person with a penìs.”
“Man Boleyn,” said another commenter, using a pun.
To be clear, the playwrights didn’t “turn Boleyn trans”; they merely cast a trans actress to play Boleyn’s cisgender character.
Mulvaney’s career began as a theatre performer, with an appearance in the national tour of The Book of Mormon as Elder White. She later performed in her own musicals Faghag at Edinburgh Fringe Festival and recently, The Least Problematic Woman in the World Off-Broadway in 2025.
The backlash over Mulavaney’s casting coincides with the current presidential administration stoking trans hatred with a succession of actions aimed at erasing transgender identity in the United States.
Chris Peterson, founder of OnStage Blog, criticized those complaining about Mulvaney’s casting.
“Let’s not pretend these people care about Six. They didn’t care yesterday. They didn’t care last week. They didn’t care when the show opened, or toured, or cast understudies, or swapped queens. They were nowhere to be found when women of color led the cast. They weren’t losing sleep over historical accuracy when Anne Boleyn was singing like a Spice Girl,” Peterson wrote.
“But the second Mulvaney, a trans woman, gets cast? Oh now Broadway is sacred ground. Now casting ‘matters.’ Now they’re suddenly defenders of art, womanhood, tradition, and whatever other concept they found on a meme that morning,” Peterson continued. “Give me a break.”
“This isn’t concern. This isn’t critique. This is the same group of cowardly bigots who only show up when they smell a chance to punch down. They don’t love theatre. They don’t love women. They don’t love history. They love outrage,” he added.
But Mulvaney remains unflappable.
On Monday, she took to Instagram from the Six stage set to share not only her excitement over her new role, but some thoughts about how she ended up in the show, despite or because of the adversity she’s faced.
Mulvaney said she’s gotten some “not so lovely messages questioning my casting, and hating in general, and my first instinct was to come on here and try to convince those people that I do have it takes to be a Broadway performer, and to tell you why.”
“Then I realized I shouldn’t waste my breath on that because this is a miracle,” she said.
“Being a trans person in 2026 when this world is working against us in what feels like every way, for me to be able to step out onto a Broadway stage as Anne Boleyn!” a role that is “so rooted in a show that is celebrating femininity, I think that’s a miracle.”
“Sometimes we have to take a different route to get where we’re supposed to get in life,” she mused.
“If I had to go viral in a far-right media firestorm, and spend many years and many tears wondering why that was happening, and trying desperately to get back to what I once loved — which was theatre — I would do it all over again if it meant that I got to be on stage,” she said.
And she had a message for anyone like her aspiring to a dream.
“If there are any queer or trans kids watching, I just want you to know that you can literally do anything. Maybe that’s theater, maybe it something different, but do not let anyone take away what brings you joy. And you might have to fight really hard for it, or go around the long way, but it is so worth it.”
“There are so many people cheering you on,” Mulvaney said, her smile as wide as ever. “And I am one of them.”
Mulvaney debuts as Anne Boleyn on February 16 at the Lena Horne Theatre in New York.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.