Non-Binary Actor Zoe Terakes Brings Authenticity to 'Wentworth's Reb

Season 8 of the Australian women's prison drama Wentworth is introducing viewers to a whole new cast of inmates.

The season opens with Lou "Fingers" Kelly and her boyfriend, Reb, who is a trans man, attempting to rob a high-end jewelry boutique at gunpoint, only to be taken to the high-security prison on the charges of armed robbery.

As the season unfolds, we come to learn that a lot of the pair's criminal motivations come out of the hopes of securing the necessary funds for Reb's top surgery, which has made viewers curious to learn more about the actor who plays Reb. Keep reading!

Rebecca "Reb" Keane is a new addition to Wentworth, brought to the correctional center after he and his partner Lou take part in an armed robbery gone wrong. After successfully leaving a jewelry store with thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise, the car they are using to escape gets hit by a taxi cab and the two are sent to Wentworth.

In an interview with Foxtel, Wentworth's Australian network, non-binary actor Zoe Terakes introduces their character as a "beautiful" trans guy. "He's not who you would expect to see in prison, but he comes in with his partner and major love of his life, Lou," they explain. "Lou's a former Top Dog of Wentworth and Reb's never been to prison, so he's understandably terrified and timid and shy and gentle."

Over the course of Season 8, we watch Reb struggle to procure hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and resort at one point to taking steroids he obtained from another inmate, which sends Reb into anaphylactic shock.

Reb is eventually approved for top surgery, but is forced to pass an assessment with prison psychologist Dr. Miller. However, speaking to the Wentworth shrink only brings back memories of the conversion therapy cult where he was before Wentworth, which is where he met Lou, and suffered sexual abuse at the hands of the cult's head psychologist, Dr. Mendel.

19-year-old actor Zoe Terakes tells Foxtel that the relationship between their character, Reb, and his partner Lou "toys with gender and power in a really beautiful way, because if we're talking archetypal relationships, Reb's the guy and Lou's the girl — except that Lou's the protector and has all the power and dominance."

The young actor, who has starred in theater productions of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House and Arthur Miller's View From the Bridge, made their TV debut in 2017 as Pearl Perati in the series Janet King. They've gone on to act in the short films like The Craft and Her Own Music, as well as taking on the role of Scarlett in the television series, The End, before landing this career-defining role as Reb on Wentworth.

In Zoe's opinion, the era of cis gender people playing trans characters on screen is quickly coming to an end. "I've never seen a cis gender person tell a transgender story 100 percent believably," Zoe said to Australian publication IF. "There is a level of authenticity in representation that comes when you have somebody who gets it, feels it in their bones and they have lived it."

Stream all eight seasons of Wentworth on Netflix.