All about Michaela Jae Rodriguez

1. All about Michaela Jae Rodriguez

2. Who Is Michaela Jae Rodriguez? • Michaela Jae Rodriguez played Angel in an Off-Broadway revival of Rent in 2011 and 2012. She did this because she loves the arts. This role played a part in her decision to undergo a medical transition. Rodriguez was worried that becoming a woman would hurt her career, but she continued to be cast in shows. In the TV show Pose, she played Blanca, a trans woman who was part of the New York City ballroom scene in the 1980s and 1990s (2018-21).

3. Early Years • Rodriguez was born in Newark, NJ, on January 7, 1991. Rodriguez’s mother is black, and her father is half Puerto Rican and half black. She used to go by Mj in honour of Spider-Mary Man’s Jane Watson, but she said in November 2021 that she would now go by her full name to draw attention to the actress behind the nickname. Rodriguez, who grew up in Newark, has said, “As a young Afro-Latina, I knew there would be some steep hills for me to climb.”

4. Interest in Arts • Rodriguez has always been interested in the arts. He says, “When I was little, all I could think about was being on a stage, whether it was a live stage or a set stage.” Her mother helped her daughter by putting her in programs like the Summer Youth Performance Workshop at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

5. School Life • Rodriguez joined a ballroom house in New York City when he was 14 years old. Rodriguez was a student at Newark Arts High School at the time (a similar experience to her character in Pose). She would sometimes sneak out to go. Rodriguez was accepted and gained confidence in the ballroom community, where “people like me lived without apologies.” She has said, “I wouldn’t be the person I am today if that scene hadn’t happened.”

6. Clive Barnes Award • Rodriguez had the chance to try out for an Off-Broadway revival of Rent while he was a student at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. She got the part of Angel, and in 2011, she joined the cast. Rodriguez gave the role her own spin. Instead of playing Angel as a drag queen, she thought of her as a trans woman. She got a lot of honour for her performance, including the Clive Barnes Award for young performers. • Read Also: nataliewihongi

7. Career • In addition to being a big step in Rodriguez’s career, playing Angel made him want to change his body. She knew she was a girl when she was seven, but being in “Rent” was one of the most important moments of her life. It was like the beginning of her transition. Rodriguez said in 2018 that the role “let me live out loud and see the woman I was on stage.”

8. Assistant Director • After an unsuccessful audition for Ryan Murphy’s show Glee, Pose let Rodriguez work with him on the show. It likewise united her back with Billy Porter, who played Pray Tell in Pose and was the assistant director of Rodriguez’s Off-Broadway production of Rent, and Indya Moore, who had been in Saturday Church with Rodriguez.

9. Success in a Job • When Pose premiered in 2018, it was the first scripted TV show to have the most transgender actors as series regulars. The pose was about gay and transgender people of colour in the New York City ballroom scene at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s when HIV and AIDS were destroying communities. Rodriguez was the heart of the show as Blanca Rodriguez-Evangelista, the HIV-positive mother in the House of Evangelista. In 2019, she was in the second season of Pose, and in 2021, she was in the third and final season.

10. Personal Effect • Rodriguez said in 2019 that Blanca and Pose had a personal effect on her: “It’s changed my life in terms of awareness, being seen and heard, and, most importantly, being taken seriously as an actress.” But she also knows how important the show has been to people who watch it— “Pose has brought a lot of trans women of colour to the forefront and shown that our lives are about much more than the stigma. It shows that our lives have different parts.”

11. Popularity • Rodriguez’s popularity grew when she was on Pose. She has been to the Met Gala, sat in the front row at Fashion Week, been on the cover of magazines, become an Olay spokeswoman, and helped lead the 2019 Pride March in New York City with other Pose cast members. Rodriguez also gave the keynote speech at the fifth annual Diversity Summit at George Washington University

12. Women of the Year • Rodriguez was the first transgender model to be on the cover of Latina magazine in November 2021. Rodriguez won a Golden Globe for her role in “Pose” in January 2022. She was the first transgender actress to do so. In March 2022, Time magazine named her one of the “Women of the Year.”