Former PlayMaker finds success in acting, advocacy
Carey Cox ’16 (MFA) played on Broadway and in “The Handmaid’s Tale” while working for authentic disability representation.
Before Carey Cox gained national attention as Rose Blaine in Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” she was a student performer for Carolina’s PlayMakers Repertory Company.
She didn’t expect to pass the audition in 2013. But dramatic art professor emeritus Ray Dooley was impressed by her a monologue from Shakespeare’s “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”
“It was the funniest audition — the best I’d ever seen of this particular speech,” he said. “She left the room, and I said, ‘We’d love to have her [at Carolina].’”
Dooley worked with the dramatic art department to offer Cox a scholarship, which helped make graduate school a reality. The small class size and ability to perform alongside industry titans on stage helped her grow as an artist.
“It ended up being exactly what I needed without even realizing it,” said Cox of Carolina.
The close-knit Carolina community also helped Cox through personal hardship and change. During graduate school, Cox was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which affects the body’s connective tissues.
“I told my professors, and they were very understanding,” she said. “But it was this strange push-pull because I could still run. I could dance. I just had pain and weird symptoms.”
Meanwhile, her stage performances at PlayMakers were memorable. “It was clear she was ready for New York,” Dooley said.
Artistry and advocacy
On Broadway, Cox was the understudy for the leading role of Laura Wingfield in the 2017 revival of “The Glass Menagerie.”
Her move to New York also aligned with a progression in Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. She transitioned to using a cane full time and a wheelchair part time, letting directors and casting agents know about her disability in advance.
Cox was ready to advocate, for herself and for fellow artists with disabilities. Her desire for authentic disability representation on stage and in film is part of the reason she connected with the character Rose Blaine in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” who is written as a cane user.
“I didn’t realize until it was in front of me how much of this population is missing from our storytelling and media,” she said. “And so, then, there’s a corresponding lack of understanding in the real world because we learn from stories. We learn from television and film and theater.”
The next act
Cox and her husband, Joseph Kibler, welcomed their son, Milo, and created a web series, “Adoptive,” based on their 2024 short film of the same name. The series, made with the support of a $30,000 award from the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge Adobe Filmmaker Grant Program, debuts on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok this month. Cox says it’s her proudest work yet.
“It was really cool to get to do something that we were totally in charge of,” she said. Cox and Kibler served as directors, producers, actors and more. “And we shot it in a way that was disability friendly.”
Kathy Williams, chair of the dramatic art department, plans to bring Cox back to Carolina this spring so she can share her expertise with undergraduate student actors through the dramatic art department’s Kathleen Ford Speaker Series.
“I always ask my students, ‘What kind of artist do you want to be? What will your art bring into the world?’” Williams said. “To me, Carey — her career, her path, her advocacy, her artistry — really exemplifies that.”
Dooley said Cox is the perfect choice to inspire the next generation of Carolina artists.
“It warms your heart to see the people who you really care for find success and, more importantly, personal happiness,” said Dooley. “It’s one of the great gifts of being a professor at UNC.”
