Prime Video has cancelled Laverne Cox’s TV series Clean Slate after just one season, despite the trans-positive comedy garnering an 89 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Cox – the iconic trans actress who previously played Sophia Burset in Orange Is The New Black and Kacy Duke in Inventing Anna – starred in the series as Desiree, a trans woman who relocates to her family home in Alabama to repair her relationship with her father Harry (George Wallace) after two decades of estrangement. 

Harry is described as an “old-school car wash owner” who is “outspoken” and is expecting his son to turn up, so some might imagine it to be a series full of intolerance and a storyline where Desire must ‘convince’ her dad to accept her. But from the moment he sees his daughter for the first time, Harry is largely welcoming despite his initial shock.

The series created by Cox, Wallace and Dan Ewen was lauded for being a poignant representation of the trans community during the anti-trans fervour from the Trump administration. At the time of writing, the show received a Tomatometer of 89 per cent and a Popcornmeter of 82 per cent.

Nonetheless, Clean Slate has been subjected to cancellation by Prime Video. Deadline reported that the February 2025 series was cancelled after its eight-episode run at the end of March. The broadcaster’s reason for cancelling the series is unclear, still.

“A seven-year effort was gone in a puff of server exhaust,” the creators wrote in the guest column, which described how Clean Slate came to fruition, and to its demise.

“We’re not gonna sit here and pretend we’re the first show to get cancelled. Hell, four shows were zapped while you read this. We humbly thank those at Sony and Amazon who worked on and on behalf of Clean Slate,” the column read. “It is a privilege and a joy to make a living in the creative sphere, let alone while telling a story of import. You helped make it all possible.

“Of course, we mourn our baby. We mourn for the jobs that disappear with this news. We mourn the continued demise of non-IP creations (for the record, we would’ve gladly thrown some dragons into Harry’s car wash, or made Desiree a secret agent). We mourn full seasons. We mourn Norman [Lear, one of the series’ executive producers, who died in 2023 before the show aired], his bravery, and his not infrequent cursing. We mourn sister projects that face a similar fate. We mourn the characters being scrubbed from storytelling out of fear,” the column continued.

“Conversations will continue about where and how Desiree and Harry’s journey might continue … We will push to keep the story alive, for the sake of the kind of people portrayed in it, the kind of people being legislated out of existence, or erased from history books.”

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