Tyler Golden/FOXGlee isn't holding back in its final season.
In last Friday's episode, Coach Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones) revealed to Sue (Jane Lynch) and Sam (Chord Overstreet) that she had made the decision to transition from female to male, saying, "I have to get my body in alignment with how I see myself."
Glee is just the latest series to feature a major transgender storyline and character, with Amazon's Transparent earning critical praise (and two wins at the 2015 Golden Globes), and Orange Is the New Black's Laverne Cox landing the cover of Time magazine, becoming first time a transgender person to do so.
And Jones, who has been nominated for three Emmys for her work on the Fox series, had played a trans character before on Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy's FX pilot Pretty/Handsome in 2008, which was ultimately not picked up. But she had no idea what was coming up for Beiste on Glee.
"Ryan Murphy told me he had big plans for me this season and I said, ‘Awesome, I'm ready.' And he made me a series regular. I got the script is how I found out about it," Jones tells E! News of how she learned of the Gender Dysphoria storyline. "And at first when I was reading the script, you know the cancer thing, I was like, ‘Oh, crap. No!' And then I kept reading and I'm like, ‘Holy s—t! This is totally different!' I never expected it at all."
And while it wasn't expected, it was most certainly welcomed. "It's been a lot of work, but it's been fun," Jones says, adding that the response she received from viewers was overwhelming. "It literally shut down my twitter. For Beiste to be trending was awesome."
Jones admits she was nervous to take on the storyline, but says she's "always nervous...because I want to do it justice and make the person that I'm portraying proud and the trans community proud."
While Beiste took a leave of absence at the end of last week's episode to have a surgery done to remove her breasts, Jones reveals it won't be a long one. I come back in episode six and it's a big difference," she teases. As for the response Beiste, who will go by the name Sheldon, will receive at McKinley, Jones says, "It's awesome, it's very positive."
And Jones reveals she will perform on the series for the first time in episode 11. Declining to reveal the song she'll be tackling, Jones says, "I'm performing with a bunch of the kids. All I know is I'm a hot mess out there!"
Currently filming episode 11, Jones says the cast are receiving scripts as they are written, so she has no idea how Beiste's journey will end. But she hopes Beiste ends the series "happy, she's been through enough."
Glee airs tonight at 9 p.m. on Fox.