Mj Rodriguez was on a family vacation in Cannes when she became the first transgender person ever nominated for a lead-acting Emmy. The Pose star had stayed up all night in anticipation of the nominations announcement. At around 5:30 local time, she walked upstairs, finding her mother and godmother sitting at the dining table. She decided to record the scene—good news or not. Then her name was read out among the nominees. She broke down in tears. Her mother ecstatically swung her around before giving her “the hugest hug.” She fell into her boyfriend’s arms. A few hours later, on the phone, she can barely get through a sentence without crying. “My damn cheeks hurt I’m smiling so much,” she says. Happy tears.
This is, put simply, history—long overdue and thrillingly deserved. As Rodriguez eased into the matriarchal role of Blanca in Pose, she unveiled emotional depths and a dramatic intensity that were clearly award-worthy. Yet acting recognition for the series had been restricted to Billy Porter, the 2019 lead-actor Emmy winner (and a nominee again this year). This was the year, for Pose’s final season, that Rodriguez felt determined to change that. In an Entertainment Weekly interview from back in the spring, she said of a nomination, “I’m fighting for that. I think it’s time.”
“I am over the moon,” Rodriguez says now, the time having come. “And being alongside some amazing female actresses, that’s crazy to think that I’m even in this category!” Her pitch raises to a near squeak in disbelief. “It’s crazy.”
Rodriguez knows the power and vitality of representation. In the early days of Pose, the actor felt unsure, unprepared to fully open herself up. “I had a very hard time,” she says of that period. As the series went on, she grew into herself, and realized her power at the center of such a groundbreaking series. “It taught me to lead by example, because there are people out there who need love and positivity,” she says. “So I’m going to keep doing it. And I’m going to do it from the heart.”
Pose’s depiction of queer people of color in ’80s and early-’90s New York arrived like nothing else before it, putting forward a largely trans cast in their first major TV roles. Rodriguez believes that the legacy of the drama—created by Steven Canals, Brad Falchuk, and Ryan Murphy—is one of hope for the community, cemented by a strong overall Emmy farewell embrace. (The show is nominated for nine awards total, including outstanding drama series.) “To see the glass ceiling shatter above me and fall down into a million pieces is such a beautiful sight to see,” she says. “This nomination is not just for me. It’s for my community, for the many trans women out there fighting for their work and their art, for the many LGBTQIA members and people of color who have yet to be seen.” She stops for a moment, gathering herself. “I know it sounds like I’m preaching, but that really is my goal. I want this love to be shouted from the tops of the mountains. I feel like this nomination is exactly that.”
She gets choked up. “Forgive me for getting personal, but I have lost a very key person in my life recently, and I feel like he is getting a front-row seat and has his hand placed all over this,” she says through tears. “I can’t be more happy that I get to be the example for what a human looks like.”
This recognition means something deep to Rodriguez, and to the many who will surely follow in her footsteps. She’s at work on another project for Apple TV+, getting to play a character “so completely different from Blanca,” one who can facilitate new facets of Rodriguez’s talent. She sounds eager to show what else she’s got—that this is only the beginning.
“I feel like now the industry sees it,” she says. “And they’re accepting it, you know? It’s amazing.”
That she can barely get through an answer without crying is understandable, a testament not only to this moment’s power, but Rodriguez’s perseverance. She’s here because she pushed to get here.
“I feel like I’m in a dream—I really do,” she says. “Honestly, I don’t even want to wake up. Keep me in this dream forever. Shoot, until I die.”
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