You’ve seen her stealing scenes in The Buccaneers or maybe you remember her as the lightning-fast, sharp-tongued Lexi in the Saved by the Bell revival. Josie Totah is everywhere now. But for a lot of people who followed her career from the early Disney Channel days, there is still some confusion hanging around. Specifically, people keep searching for Josie Totah birth name details like they're trying to solve a mystery.
Honestly? It isn't a mystery. It’s just a part of her history that she’s been incredibly open about.
Josie didn't just wake up one day and decide to change things on a whim. She’s been in the industry since she was a literal child. When you grow up on screen, the world thinks they own your narrative. They think they know who you are because they saw you play a certain character at age 12. For Josie, that meant the world knew her by a name she eventually outgrew to become her truest self.
The Name Most People Remember
Before she was Josie, the credits on your TV screen usually read Joseph Jacob Totah. Most fans and industry pros just called her J.J. Totah.
That was the name attached to the quirky, scene-stealing kid on Jessie. Remember Stuart Wooten? The kid with the massive crush on Zuri? That was her. At the time, she was playing male roles because that’s how the world perceived her. She was good at it, too. She had this incredible comic timing that made her a standout on Glee as Myron Muskovitz and in the Sundance hit Other People.
But while the name J.J. Totah was becoming a "brand" in Hollywood, Josie was feeling more and more like she was wearing a costume that didn't fit. She wasn't just a "gay boy," which is how the media kept labeling her. She was a girl.
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Why the Change Happened
It’s easy to look at a name change as just a legal swap of paperwork. For Josie, it was about survival and clarity. In 2018, she wrote a deeply personal essay for Time magazine titled, "My Name Is Josie Totah — And I’m Ready to Be Free."
In that piece, she explained that she had known she was female since she was five years old. She even told her mom she wanted to wear dresses before she could even really grasp what "gender" meant. By the time she was 14, she was watching I Am Jazz (the docuseries about Jazz Jennings) and realized there was a path for her to actually be herself.
She started hormone blockers and began her transition while still working under her birth name. Can you imagine the pressure? She was starring in the NBC show Champions while the world was still calling her J.J. and using he/him pronouns.
"I almost felt like I owed it to everybody to be that gay boy," she wrote in her essay. "But that has never been the way I think of myself."
Once Champions wrapped, she knew she couldn't keep living two lives. She chose the name Josie because it felt right. It wasn't a "stage name." It was her name.
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The Transition in the Credits
If you look back at her filmography, you can actually see the moment the shift happened. It’s like a time capsule of her journey.
- Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017): She’s credited as J.J. Totah. She played Seymour O'Reilly, one of Peter Parker's classmates.
- Magic Camp (2020): Interestingly, this was filmed earlier but released later. You’ll often see her former name in the credits here because of the production timeline.
- No Good Nick (2019): This was a huge milestone. She played Lisa Haddad, which was her first time playing a female character on screen after coming out.
- Saved by the Bell (2020): By this point, "Josie Totah" was the only name anyone needed to know. She wasn't just the lead; she was a producer. She made sure her character, Lexi, was written with depth—not just as a "trans character," but as a popular, mean-girl-with-a-heart-of-gold archetype.
Legal Reality vs. Public Identity
A lot of fans get hung up on the "legal" side of things. Yes, Joseph Jacob Totah was her birth name. Yes, she transitioned. In the eyes of the law, she is Josie.
The industry has mostly caught up, though you’ll still find old IMDB pages or YouTube clips from 2013 that use her former name. It’s part of the reality of being a child star. You can't exactly go back and edit the physical film prints of a Disney show from ten years ago.
What’s cool is how the industry has respected the change. When you look at her recent work in The Buccaneers, she’s playing a period-piece character where her gender identity isn't even the "point" of the role. She’s just an actress playing a part. That was always the goal. She didn't want to be "the trans actress J.J. Totah." She wanted to be Josie.
What This Means for Her Career Moving Forward
Josie has been vocal about the fact that she doesn't want to be boxed in. She’s gunning for roles that are cisgender, roles that are transgender—basically, she just wants to play complex women.
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By reclaiming her name, she effectively reset her career. She went from being a "child actor" to a leading lady. It’s a transition that is notoriously hard for any kid in Hollywood, let alone one navigating a gender transition at the same time.
She’s now a graduate of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media. She isn't just acting; she’s developing her own projects and producing. The "J.J." era was a successful chapter, but it’s a closed one.
Actionable Takeaways for Fans and Creators
If you’re a fan or a writer looking to discuss Josie's work, here is how to handle the history accurately and respectfully:
- Use her current name: Always refer to her as Josie Totah. Even when discussing her past roles in Jessie or Glee, the standard is to say, "Josie Totah, then credited as J.J. Totah..."
- Respect the pronouns: She uses she/her. Using her former pronouns when discussing her childhood is generally considered "dead-gendering" and isn't the standard in modern journalism.
- Acknowledge the milestone: Her Time essay is a major piece of LGBTQ+ history in Hollywood. If you’re researching her, that should be your primary source.
- Focus on the work: While her transition is part of her story, her talent is why she’s still working. Her performance as Lexi in Saved by the Bell is a masterclass in comedic timing.
Josie’s journey from a kid named Joseph in Sacramento to a powerhouse named Josie in Los Angeles is a blueprint for how to handle fame with a massive amount of grace. She didn't let the name she was born with define the woman she became.