“Pose” star Michaela Jae “Mj” Rodriguez made history on January 9th , 2022 by becoming the first trans actor to win a Golden Globe Award. The FX series “Pose” has been hailed for casting the largest transgender cast in a scripted series. They hired the first trans woman of color director, and the TV series also stars have been extremely vocal about the lack of award recognition they have received.
Last year she made history for the first time in summer 2021 after she became the first transgender performer to be nominated for a lead acting Emmy. Unfortunately, Mj Rodriguez lost the Emmy to Olivia Colman for “The Crown.” This Emmy nomination was long overdue because, “Pose” had been snubbed for the last few years. Before Rodriguez’s nomination in 2021, the only nomination had been for Billy Porter, a cisgender actor on this LGBTQ TV series.
But that night of January 9th, 2022 at Golden Globe Award ceremony, Mj Rodriguez beat out Jennifer Aniston, Elizabeth Moss, Uzo Aduba, and Christine Baranski to win the best actress in a TV drama. On her Instagram live she dedicated the award to “the LGBTQAI, Black, Latina, Asian [communities], the many multi beautiful colors of the rainbow… This is not just for me, this is for y’all. This is the door that opens for y’all”
The FX series “Pose” is an American drama television series set in 1980s New York and showcases New York City’s African-American and Latino LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming drag ball culture scene. With the final season in 2021, this LGBTQ TV series follows MJ Rodriguez who plays a character called Bianca Rodriguez who starts her own “house”, and is a house mother and here “house” signifies a chosen family of rejected queer youth. The American LGBTQ series was created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Steven Canals, and also stars Evan Peters, Kate Mara, Dominique Jackson, Billy Porter, Indya Moore, and many other transgender actors.
MJ Rodriguez is an American actress and singer, born in Newark, New Jersey. She prayed for years “to become female” and initially came out to her parents as “bisexual/gay” at the age of 14. Her father was supportive and got involved in the ballroom scene and graduated from Newark Arts High School. She attended performing arts schools in her youth before starting in the theatre production of Rent and won the 2011 Clive Barnes Award for her performance. Post transition she worked on stage again and was casted in small TV roles, like Nurse Jackie, The Carrie Diaries, and Luke Cage. Her career changing role was getting casted as one of the lead roles as Bianca Rodriguez in the FX television series Pose. The pathbreaking TV series became “a hit for its bold depiction of joy and trauma of LGBTQ life amidst the backdrop of the AIDS crisis,” says the NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. The TV series also history with the largest cast of transgender actors in series regular roles. Two seasons of this LGBTQ series are available on Netflix in India.
