The last season of The Flash will see American actress Nicole Maines reprise her Supergirl role as Nia Nal aka Dreamer. This revelation was first revealed by TVLine, and fans are overjoyed at her return. The outstanding 25-year-old actress has previously acted in Royal Pains, Good Trouble, Darby and the Dead, and several more series and films. Nicole Maines rose to fame in the fourth, fifth, and sixth seasons of The CW superhero series Supergirl, as Nia Nal. She was the first to play a transgender superhero on television. Here are some further insights about the American actress and her future part in The Flash.
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Nicole Maines has an identical twin brother called Jonas Maines.
Maines and her identical twin Jonas were adopted in 1997 by Kelly and Wayne Maines. Kelly’s second cousin was the biological mother of one of the twins. In a recent interview, showrunner and executive producer Eric Wallace spoke of her newest addition to The Flash franchise:
“As Supergirl fans, all of us here on The Flash is SUPER-excited to have Nicole join Team Flash for a one-time adventure as we wrap off our final season.”
He continued, saying:
“Nicole Maines is a fantastically talented actress, and I’m thrilled she’s agreed to be a part of a very special Season 9 episode where I get to cross off one of my ‘Arrowverse Bucket List’ team-ups: having two fantastic reporters — Iris West-Allen (Candice Patton) and Nia Nal — investigate their own very bizarre and frightening mystery.”
Nicole Maines was born biologically male, although she displayed evidence of gender variation at a young age. She chose to play with toys aimed towards females and based on female characters in cartoons and movies. She was only three when she discovered she wasn’t a boy, and by the age of four, she was being open about her gender with her adoptive parents.
She eventually changed her name to Nicole (Nikki) after the character Nicole Bristow, one of Zoey’s sidekicks on the Nickelodeon sitcom Zoey 101. She got gender-affirming surgery in Philadelphia a month after graduating from high school in 2015.
A summary of her professional background
Maines’ and her family’s tale was told in the 2015 book Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Washington Post writer Amy Ellis Nutt. She even starred in the USA Network drama Royal Pains as a transgender kid whose health was suffering as a result of her hormones. She was one of 11 people featured in the 2016 HBO documentary The Trans List. Her major break came in 2018 when she was cast as Nia Nal on The CW’s Supergirl. Maines was a regular on the program from the fourth to the last season.
Nicole Maines earned the top acting award at the Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival in 2019 for her work in Bit, a horror film about queer female vampires. In a recent interview, CW Entertainment President Brad Schwartz praised the program, saying:
“The Flash will be recognized as one of The CW’s finest series, and everyone involved in its terrific nine-season run should be extremely pleased.”
Nicole Maines has written various comic books, including her own Supergirl character, Nia Nal/Dreamer, and also co-wrote the story for Dreamer’s debut in the comic Superman: Son of Kal-El.
