IN A CATEGORY OF THEIR OWN

As Pose takes its final bow, producer, writer and director Janet Mock, and stars MJ Rodriguez, Indya Moore and Dominique Jackson reflect on how the groundbreaking series began-and then changed everything

-  Janet Mock

Steven Canals took 166 meetings before finding someone willing to make Pose. It was a pitch about New York's ballroom scene set at the height of the AIDS epidemic, written by a queer man of Black and Puerto Rican heritage, starring an almost all-non-white cast, and with a triptych of trans women as its nucleus. Not exactly what executives in Hollywood, an industry still struggling to see BIPOC and LGBTQ+ stories as necessary and profitable, would score across-the-board 10s. The series finally found a home with Ryan Murphy and FX. But Pose didn't find its heart until the producers brought on the trans women whose lived experience and ability to channel it into art would turn the show into a cultural phenomenon: Janet Mock, an activist and bestselling author; MJ Rodriguez, who began acting at 11, entered the ballroom scene at 14 and came out as trans mid-career; Indya Moore, a foster kid who was bullied as a teen and now has a modelling contract with IMG; and Dominique Jackson, an emigrant from Trinidad and Tobago who became a ballroom icon. Between them, they know about hardship, homelessness, sex work and dealing with rejection. And because of their camaraderie and agency in shaping Pose, it's so much more than a struggle story. It's also about joy-hard won and worthy of being celebrated in ballrooms and beamed into living rooms everywhere. On the eve of Pose's series finale after three remarkable seasons and four Emmy Awards, the women reflect on its happy beginnings and its bittersweet ending.