Twenty-one years after her breakthrough film’s release, Lilly Wachowski has finally confirmed theories about the trans allegory at the heart of The Matrix, the blockbuster film franchise she codirected with her sister Lana. In a video interview for Netflix, Wachowski spoke candidly about the trilogy’s implicit trans narrative, explaining how she and Lana—who are both trans, but were not out at the time of the film’s release—crafted their sci-fi story.
“I’m glad that it has gotten out that that was the original intention,” Wachowski said. “The corporate world wasn’t ready for it.”
The franchise tells the story of Neo (Keanu Reeves), a hacker trapped inside a simulated version of reality, dubbed the Matrix. At its heart, she explained, the Matrix itself “was all about the desire for transformation, but it was all coming from a closeted point of view.” The character Switch (played by Belinda McClory), she noted, was originally written as someone who presented as male in the real world, and as a woman in the Matrix.
Both Wachowskis came out after all three Matrix films were released, Lana in 2010 and Lilly in 2016. Since then, there have been numerous pieces retroactively examining The Matrix series through a trans lens.
“I don’t know how present my transness was in the background of my brain as we were writing it,” Wachowski said. “We were always living in a world of imagination. That’s why I gravitated toward sci-fi and fantasy and played Dungeons and Dragons. It was all about creating worlds. It freed us up as filmmakers because we were able to imagine stuff at that time that you didn’t necessarily see onscreen.”
Wachowski has addressed this in the past, speaking warmly about the ongoing conversation around the film in a GLAAD Award speech in 2016.
“There’s a critical eye being cast back on Lana and I’s work through the lens of our transness,” she said. “This is a cool thing because it’s an excellent reminder that art is never static. And while the ideas of identity and transformation are critical components in our work, the bedrock that all ideas rest upon is love.”
The discourse around the franchise will only grow deeper in the coming months, as Wachowski prepares to write and direct a fourth Matrix film. Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Jada Pinkett-Smith are a few of the stars confirmed to reprise their roles, while newcomers like Yahya Abdul-Mateen and Neil Patrick Harris are set to join the cast as well. Trans allegories aside, fans might also wonder how the upcoming installment will tackle how right-leaning internet users have co-opted the concept of the “red pill,” turning it into a conservative meme. Both Wachowskis had largely been quiet about the co-opting, but Lilly spoke out about it in May after Elon Musk and Ivanka Trump tweeted about the meme. “Fuck both of you,” Wachowski wrote.
Wachowski’s interview with Netflix arrives after she was featured in Disclosure, the 2020 documentary about the history of trans representation in media. She also cocreated the series Sense8 with Lana for the streamer.
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