Laverne Cox would prefer you call for a driver.

“I do not drive, Jennifer. I’ve have had my learner’s permit twice,” Cox revealed to host Jennifer Hudson on Tuesday’s episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show. Cox then recounted the tragicomic story that’s held her back all these years from finding freedom on the open road.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Cox recalled a particularly hectic week in June 2019, during which, “booked and busy” with Pride month events, Cox’s boyfriend at the time broke up with her out of the blue. “I remember waking up in a puddle of tears, calling my therapist, and I was a wreck, but I got through the press I had to do for that day.”

But then there was a driving lesson, one she was to have “right before” taking her official test for a license.

“I’m in the car on Fifth Avenue and like 21st Street, and the teacher’s like, ‘Okay now turn into the traffic.’ I look and I see a big bus, it’s almost rush hour, and I was like, ‘I can’t do this… I’ll pay you for your time.’ Cox said. “I was that Viola Davis meme picking up the purse out of the back seat, and I just got out of the car, ‘I can’t do this.'”

Cox made a name for herself with the role of Sophia Burset, the witty and loquacious hairdresser at Litchfield Penitentiary in Orange Is the New Black. The Alabama-born actress, 52, became the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy in an acting category in 2014, and the year after, she became the first openly trans woman to win a Daytime Emmy, which she received for documentary Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word.

The actress’ latest project is Clean Slate, a comedy co-starring comedy legend George Wallace about a trans daughter and cis father learning how to navigate the former’s transition. The series, which premiered Feb. 6 on Amazon Prime Video, features plenty of driving, which very well may have put Cox back in her feels. “Sometimes you have a breakup, and you have to work. [But] there is no way with the trauma of the breakup could I get behind the wheel of the car and kill myself or somebody else. I guess that’s a good excuse,” she joked to Hudson.

“Ultimately, this show is about love, this show is about family, and trying to figure out how to connect after being away from each other and figuring out how to connect across generations and experiences,” Cox said of the new series to Entertainment Weekly last December.

The series marks Cox’s first major screen role in a scripted series since 2022’s Inventing Anna, on which she portrayed celebrity fitness instructor Kacy Duke.