MadameNoire
Source: Courtesy of Dwen Curry / Dwen Curry
Produced by A. Smith & Co., the BET+ series American Gangster: Trap Queens is a true-crime documentary series that tells the stories of some notorious female criminals who managed to turn their lives around. Narrated by Lil’ Kim and featuring interviews with the women themselves, in addition to those who knew their cases best, MadameNoire spoke with one of the show’s stars, Dwen Curry.
Profiled in the third episode of the recently premiered Season 2, Curry, a transgender woman, said she grew up as a “miniature gay boy” from Detroit who faced the confusion of coming to terms with her gender expression and sexuality while also facing bullying and later a battle with drugs. In reference to how the bullying she experienced as a young person shaped the person she became and choices she made, Curry said it had a major impact. According to her, it added to the drive she had to pursue doing what it took to become financially secure by any means necessary.
“Just from the bullying from different people, I said, ‘There’s no way I’m getting ready to sit here and be broke,’” she told us. “I needed to make sure that people respected me. If anything, like ‘You are going to respect me.’ That pretty much gave me the endurance to press forward and establish the individual that I am today.”
After moving to Oakland, getting cleaned up, and working on her hustle, Curry became one of the savviest socialites in Black Hollywood. She was a stylist to celebrities, including Mariah Carey, Eve, and Missy Elliott. What everyone didn’t know was that alongside her thriving salon business, behind the scenes, Curry was secretly racking up millions of dollars while engaging in identity theft and wiretapping.
During the heyday of her operation, Curry said that though she lived a good life for a time, gaining a lot of respect and attention, when things started to go awry, she saw the people around her for who they really were. And that’s when things started to come tumbling down.
“What I will say is, beforehand, everything was extremely copacetic. When you sit up there and you have friends around you, especially in La La Land — people call it Hollywood but it’s La La Land to me because nothing is real — you know, a lot of them didn’t stay by me,” she says. “So when I turned around and I did other stuff, you pretty much see who’s for you and who’s against you. And for the most part, I saw that a lot of people that I was dealing with at that particular time, were not for me. They were definitely against me.”
Not only would the people around her show a different side, but the good times eventually stopped rolling. With felony identity theft and grand theft of personal property charges to contend with, Curry was facing steep jail time. However, her eventual sentence was reduced to four and a half years based on good behavior and the completion of a drug program. These days, life is much different. She’s been embracing the ups and downs of her past, as well as other people whose shoes she’s walked in. “There’s a group of individuals that are pretty much up under my care and we are extremely close,” she says. “The loyalty was there and we established our whole thing. They refer to her as “The Original GG,” GG standing for “Gay Gangster.” Curry is also glad to be sharing her journey on American Gangster: Trap Queens. It’s quite the story to tell.
“I feel like BET did a great job on displaying as much as they could,” she says. “Like I couldn’t even have asked for a better job.”
See Curry’s story and other episodes from Season 2 on the subscription service BET +.
