August 02 2025, 08:15 
Laverne Cox and an all-star line-up of trans luminaries made network TV history this week, competing on Celebrity Family Feud as the ABC game show’s first-ever all-trans team.
The Emmy-nominated actress and advocate teamed up with her “chosen family,” RuPaul’s Drag Race judge and entertainer TS Madison, writer and actress Joslyn De Freece, singer Mila Jam, and performer and RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Peppermint to face off against celebrity DJ and music producer Diplo and his family on the Thursday, July 31, episode.
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Ts Madison opens Black trans “Starter House” in her former Atlanta home
“It’s not where you start, it’s where you go,” said the Grammy-winning trans singer.
Unlike the regular version of the show, Celebrity Family Feud sees stars and their kin competing to benefit charities of their choice. Cox’s team played for TS Madison Starter House, her nonprofit housing initiative in Atlanta supporting Black trans women engaged in sex work.
In a video shot by Cox on set and posted ahead of Thursday night’s episode, Madison explained that “TS Madison Starter House is a re-entry house for system-impacted trans women.”
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The initiative is a collaboration between Madison, NAESM, Inc., an Atlanta-based nonprofit and one of the oldest Black-led HIV/AIDS service organizations in the South, and A New Way of Life’s SAFE Housing Network, a national collective providing safe reentry housing to formerly incarcerated people. It opened in March in the entertainer’s former Atlanta home. The first-of-its-kind program in the South provides residents with psychological support, health and wellness care, and workshops centered on business plan development and project management, all designed by Black trans women to meet the specific needs of formerly incarcerated Black trans women, who face disproportionately high rates of incarceration and recidivism due to a lack of access to housing.
“Hallelujah, honey,” Cox said in her video from the Celebrity Family Feud set. “We’re gonna have some fun, we’re gonna make some money for charity, and we’re gonna look good doing it!”
The team definitely had some fun at the expense of host Steve Harvey. In a clip from the episode posted to Instagram, the comedian asks Madison if he can just call her “TS.”
Her cheeky response: “Of course, I take it short or long.”
“We’re free-balling today, all day!” Madison added as the studio audience and her fellow teammates erupted in laughter and cheers.
“Some of us are without the — the b-word. Some of us have…set them free,” Cox interjected to another round of laughter, as Havey appeared at a loss for words.
“This was a beautiful moment of chosen family and sisterhood,” Cox wrote on Instagram, according to Gayety. “We need each other now more than ever. We are all we have.”
As the outlet noted, Celebrity Family Feud Cox and her all-trans team have a massive platform, introducing a prime-time network TV audience to real trans women at a time when the community faces relentless attacks on their rights fueled by relentless right-wing misinformation and scare tactics.
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