TV
MJ Rodriguez Leads LGBTQ Emmy Nominations
“Pose” star makes history as fi rst trans woman to get a nod for Outstanding Lead Actress
BY TAT BELLAMY-WALKER
MJ Rodriguez, the
actress from the
groundbreaking FX
series “Pose,” has
been tapped as the fi rst transgender
woman to be nominated for an
Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress.
Rodriguez, who plays Blanca
in “Pose,” was nominated alongside
fellow castmate Billy Porter,
who plays Pray Tell and grabbed
a nomination for Best Lead Actor.
The cast as a whole is also wrapping
up the third season with an
Emmy nomination for Outstanding
Drama Series.
In the past, Rodriguez, Indya
Moore, Angelica Ross, and other
key trans cast members on the
show have voiced criticism for the
favoring of white, cisgender, and
heterosexual actors in Emmy nominations.
Seven years ago, out trans actress
Laverne Cox became the fi rst
trans person to receive an Emmy
nomination when she was recognized
for her work on “Orange Is
the New Black.”
In a statement, GLADD praised
the Academy’s latest decision,
which brings more diverse LGBTQ
➤ REVOLUTIONS, from p.16
Actress Mj Rodriguez makes history as the fi rst trans woman to receive an Emmy nomination for
Outstanding Lead Actress.
voices to the forefront.
“Michaela Jaé (Mj) Rodriguez’s
Emmy nomination for Outstanding
Lead Actress in a Drama Series
is a breakthrough for transgender
women in Hollywood, and a longoverdue
recognition for her groundbreaking
performance over the past
three seasons of POSE,” GLADD
President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis
said in a written statement.
Among others, LGBTQ actors
on “Saturday Night Live” garnered
several nominations from the Academy.
Out gay Chinese-American
Friends,” which, if not certifi ably matriarchal
with its mentions of “tasty orgasm juice,” was at
least deeply anti-patriarchal. So Larry Mitchell
started the Calamus Press to publish his book,
which became deeply loved but remained mostly
outside the mainstream. Once out of print,
it was Xeroxed or PDF’d; passed around, but
not republished — until 2019, when Nightboat
Books reissued it with a richly historical introduction
by Morgan Bassichis and a stunning
preface by Tourmaline: two queers of the millennial
persuasion.
This rendition of “The Faggots and Friends
Between Revolutions” is not kinky nostalgia; the
book’s great value is its celebration of the perennial
need among outcasts to hold each other.
Now, when political organizing tends to move
more horizontally than hierarchically; when
the LGBTQ+ movement, along with those like
REUTERS/ANDREW KELLY
actor Bowen Yang earned a nomination
for Outstanding Supporting
Actor in a Comedy Series for
his role on the show, while out gay
actor Dan Levy and out lesbian
actress Kate McKinnon grabbed
nominations for their acting roles.
LGBTQ cast members at “Saturday
Night Live” are running up
against out bisexual actor Hannah
Einbinder and out non-binary actor
Carl Clemons-Hopkins, who star in
the series “Hacks.”
Non-binary actor Emma Corrin,
who played Princess Diana in
the Movement for Black Lives, have little or no
top-down chain of command, and it’s becoming
crucial to practice “self-care,” we can forget we
still need friendship and beauty and connection.
That need is shared by faggots, friends, queers
— by anybody, in fact, with an inveterate hunger
to do good for the world at the last minute.
Besides having sex, queers and faggots like
to have fun — but they also occasionally have
to go mad. Because, back in Ramrod, where
you’re now allowed to get married and take
part in government pillage, there’s scant human
connection. You’re expected to FIT IN, get a
BRAND, and you’re nobody until you have 50K
Twitter followers.
In “Faggots,” the Hollyhock character emotionally
shatters from too much worry over bills and
strange men watching the house. Tourmaline,
in the preface, mentions her own 2021 worry
that she’ll go mad. In fact, she already has, for
“imagining that respectability and responsibility
TELEVISION
the “Crown,” secured a nomination
for Outstanding Lead Actress
in a Drama Series. Bisexual actress
Gillian Anderson, who plays
Margaret Thatcher in the show,
grabbed a nomination for Outstanding
Supporting Actress in a
Drama Series. The British actress
plans to go head to head with
Black LGBTQ actress Samira Wiley,
who has been tapped for her
work in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
The Academy is also recognizing
the fi lm version of the musical
“Hamilton.” Out gay actor
Jonathan Groff, who plays King
George, swept up a nomination for
Outstanding Supporting Actor in
a Limited or Anthology Series or
Movie. Meanwhile, “Queer Eye,”
which features out non-binary actor
Jonathan Van Ness and LGBTQ
actors Bobby Berk, Karamo
Brown, Tan France, and Antoni
Porowski, also grabbed a nomination
for Outstanding Structured
Reality Program.
The Academy is once again honoring
RuPaul, also known as Mother
Ru to fans, for Outstanding Host for
his reality TV show, “RuPaul’s Drag
Race.” Popular spin-offs of the drag
series, such as “RuPaul’s Drag Race
Untucked,” have been nominated for
Best Unstructured Reality Program.
could stop the immense violences that so many
of us have to live through and often die from.”
But Tourmaline, an activist and fi lmmaker
whose work focuses on the power of Black
queer and trans people, is wise enough to know
that there is wisdom in hell — and she’s brave
enough to return and share it. “I am still here,”
she writes, “because I have also been held, in
these moments of despair, by lilac and pine tree
and moonbeam and loose tomato and hollyhock…
I have become undone and this has kept me
alive. The faggots have helped me believe that if
we are to ever make it to that next revolution it
will be through becoming undone… The faggots
are constantly reminding me that in moments of
apparent scarcity, our best defense is to respond
with abundance.”
THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS BETWEEN
REVOLUTIONS | By Larry Mitchell |
Nightboat Books | 128 pages | $9.99 – $16.95
GayCityNews.com | JULY 15 - JULY 28, 2021 17
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