Pose
POSE／ポーズ
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
New York's ballroom scene from 1987 to 1998, with what its producers called the largest transgender cast ever assembled for a scripted series.
New York, 1987. Blanca, a trans woman who has just learned she is HIV-positive, leaves the House of Abundance, ruled by the imperious Elektra, to found a house of her own, Evangelista, in the ballroom world where Black and Latino queer and trans New Yorkers compete for trophies and make families out of one another. Her first children are Damon, a gifted dancer thrown out by his parents, who goes on to study dance; Angel, a sex worker; and later Lil Papi, a young hustler with a head for business. Pray Tell, the balls' emcee and Blanca's closest friend, loses his lover, Costas, to AIDS. Angel has an affair with Stan, a married yuppie who works in Trump Tower, and turns him away when he begs to come back. At the end of the first season Elektra joins Blanca's house, and Blanca is crowned Mother of the Year.
The second season, into the early 1990s, is shadowed by the epidemic and by violence. Blanca's nail salon is burned out. Candy, of the rival House of Ferocity, is murdered while working at a motel, and at her funeral Pray Tell gives the balls the lip-sync category she had fought for. Angel, a rising model, loses her contract when she is outed as trans; Papi becomes her manager, and they get engaged. Elektra is crowned Mother of the Year, and Blanca, now in a wheelchair, meets two homeless teenagers and takes them to dinner.
The third season opens in 1994. Blanca works as a nurse's aide and dates a doctor, Christopher; Angel and Papi marry and make a family with a small boy, Beto. Pray Tell, gravely ill, is given a place on a drug trial. After singing with Blanca at a ball he is found dead, and his boyfriend, Ricky, learns that Pray Tell had been giving Ricky his own trial medication. In the last episode Blanca gives his friends lockets holding his ashes, and ACT UP scatters the ashes of the dead on the mayor's lawn. In 1998 Blanca is a qualified nurse; Elektra, Angel and Lulu are thriving, and Damon runs dance studios in Chicago. Blanca and Ricky are raising new house children, and Elektra names Blanca a legend. Asked by another mother how she keeps going without winning, Blanca says the reason is to lift up the children of a house.
Starring
Michaela Jaé Rodriguezas Blanca Rodriguez-Evangelista
A trans woman living with HIV who founds the House of Evangelista and becomes a mother to young people with nowhere else to go.
Blanca Rodriguez-Evangelista’s story
Told she is HIV-positive, Blanca walks out of Elektra's house to build one of her own, gathering Damon from the street, Angel, and later Papi. She is crowned Mother of the Year, then opens a nail salon in a storefront whose landlord tries to evict her on learning she is trans, and later has it burned. When her diagnosis becomes AIDS she tells a cabaret audience that she is positive, falls gravely ill, and ends the second season in a wheelchair, taking two homeless teenagers to dinner. By 1994 she is a nurse's aide dating a doctor; she and Pray Tell join a drug trial, and she loses him anyway. In 1998, a qualified nurse, she is named a legend, and tells another mother she keeps going to lift up the children.
Billy Porteras Pray Tell
The most celebrated emcee of the balls, a designer and mentor, living with HIV as friends die around him.
Pray Tell’s story
Pray Tell rules the balls from the microphone. He sits with his lover, Costas, as AIDS takes him, then tests positive himself and tells only Blanca. At Candy's funeral he gives the balls the lip-sync category he once voted down. He is hospitalised after a bad reaction to AZT, falls for Ricky and joins ACT UP's protests. When Damon exposes his secret drug use, his friendship with Blanca is badly damaged, and in the last season his drinking drives Ricky away until he agrees to rehab. Told he has untreatable lymphoma, he goes home to the family he left twenty years before and makes peace with his mother. Back in New York he sings with Blanca at a ball, and the next day Ricky finds him dead: he had been giving Ricky his own trial medication.
Dominique Jacksonas Elektra Abundance
The haughty mother of the House of Abundance, Blanca's rival and, in time, one of her family.
Elektra Abundance’s story
Elektra rules the House of Abundance. She steals from a charity bucket towards her gender confirmation surgery and has it against her sugar daddy's wishes; he drops her, she is evicted and strips to get by, and her own children leave to found a house of their own. Blanca takes her in. Working as a dominatrix, she returns to find a client dead in her dungeon, and with Blanca and Candy hides his body in a trunk in her closet. She founds a new house, the House of Wintour, schemes to have Damon hurt for Ricky's sake until Blanca shames her out of it, and is crowned Mother of the Year. By 1994 she runs a phone-sex business, later with the Mafia's help, and pays for Angel's wedding. In 1998, prosperous, she names Blanca a legend.
Indya Mooreas Angel Evangelista
A trans sex worker who joins Blanca's house, becomes a model, and marries Papi.
Ryan Jamaal Swainas Damon Richards-Evangelista
A homeless young dancer rejected by his homophobic parents, the first child of the House of Evangelista.
Angel Bismark Curielas Esteban "Lil Papi" Martinez-Evangelista
A resourceful young hustler who joins the house, becomes an agent for LGBT models and Angel's husband.
Why it matters
Pose puts at the centre of prime-time drama the people American television had mostly left at its edges: Black and Latina trans women, young queer people thrown out of their homes, and the chosen families they built in New York's ballrooms while AIDS was killing their friends. It is a story about mothering as a practice rather than a biology, and about joy and style as ways of surviving a city that would rather not see them. Its producers said they had assembled the largest transgender cast ever for a scripted series. Billy Porter became the first openly gay Black man to win the Emmy for lead actor in a drama, and in 2021 Michaela Jaé Rodriguez became the first trans performer nominated for lead actress. It leaves the question Blanca answers at the end: why keep going without winning.