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Meet Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, the first trans actor to win a Golden Globe – 7 things to know about the Pose star who wants to make music like Beyoncé, Michael Jackson and Katy Perry
- Before starring alongside Billy Porter in FX’s Pose she loved Marvel comics as a child – so much that she took the initials of Spider-Man’s partner Mary Jane as a stage name
- Next seen in Apple TV+ comedy series Loot, co-starring Maya Rudolph, she told Stephen Colbert that she’s writing her own comic and looking forward to more varied acting roles
Michaela Jaé Rodriguez has become the first trans actor to win a Golden Globe, for FX’s Pose, which co-stars Billy Porter. Photo: @mjrodriguez7/Instagram
Michaela Jaé Rodriguez just made history as the first transgender actor to win a Golden Globe. She was awarded best actress for her role as housemother Blanca on FX’s Pose – also bagging the first Golden Globe for the series that focuses on New York City’s queer-and trans-led 1980s ballroom culture.
First appearing in the limelight at age seven – the same age at which she had “prayed to become female” – Rodriguez had already made history last year, when she became the first trans actress nominated for an Emmy in a lead acting category, also for Pose. The talented actress also debuted as a singer in 2021, and just turned 31 on January 7, but what else do we know about her?
1. She fights for what she believes in
Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, the first transgender actor to win a Golden Globe. Photo: @mjrodriguez7/Instagram
Born to an African-American mother and a father of half Puerto Rican and half African-American descent, Rodriguez has always been proud of her Afro-Latin side. She believes that everyone should be looked at equally as a person.
Actress and singer Michaela Jaé Rodriguez on set. Photo: @mjrodriguez7/Instagram
“I just pray that, at a certain point, people get to see the human being,” she told Refinery29, “that people get to see the person who is all types of intersectionalities – black, Latina, trans, a woman, all things encompassed in one – and not use it as a logline or a subtext title where it’s like, ‘This is what she is and look at what she’s done because she is trans’.”
2. Her stage name came from Spider-Man comics
Michaela Jaé Rodriguez grew up a lover of comic books and called herself MJ in honour of Spider-Man’s partner Mary Jane. Photo: @mjrodriguez7/Instagram
As a fan of comic books, Rodriguez previously has used the stage name MJ – a nod to her love for Spider-Man’s partner Mary Jane. “I’m a comic guru. I love Marvel,” she told Broadway.com, “I saw her and then I saw the movie … and I was like ‘I want that name. Let’s see if I can find those initials in my name.’ I found them, and they’re mine now.”
On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert she revealed that she is working on a comic book project of her own and is almost done with the second draft.
3. The red carpet was always her dream
Michaela Jaé Rodriguez is working on a comic book. Photo: @mjrodriguez7/Instagram
Having dreamed of being in the spotlight as a starlet since she was five years old, Rodriguez told The Advocate magazine that she felt satisfied simply to walk the red carpet, with or without an award.
Rodriguez attends The 2021 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in September 2021 in New York. Photo: Getty Images
“I felt like I was in demand, and it didn’t matter if I had won or I didn’t. I had already won by being there … It felt great to just walk that red carpet and have the conversations and interviews that I had and just being able to sit at that table,” she said. “It doesn’t have to take an award; it doesn’t even have to take a nomination. It simply just takes the work and the message behind who you are and how you want to influence people.”
4. She wants to open the door for young talent
MJ shared photos of her getting ready for the 2021 Met Gala. Photo:@mjrodriguez7/Instagram
But winning a prize is always better and Rodriguez has now done that, describing the Golden Globes win two days after her 31st birthday as a “sickening birthday present”. Thanking the Globes, she wrote on her Instagram that the honour “is going to open the door for many more young talented individuals”.
“To my young LGBTQAI babies WE ARE HERE the door is now open now reach the stars.”
She also told The Advocate that she would not stop there but would make sure that door was always kept open: “I’m going to put a little stopper in that door so that it can open up as much as it can”.
5. She really wants to do a Marvel movie
Acknowledging her debt to her role in Pose, Rodriguez now wants to get out of the Blanca’s shade to shine in other characters, in a romantic comedy perhaps and definitely a Marvel movie.
“I would just love to be a silly, goofy girl who falls head over heels for this guy or vice versa,” she told Refinery29. “I see myself showing people another side of the [romantic] experience of a woman like myself and many other women who go through it. It’s not just the trans experience.”
Billy Porter as Pray Tell, right, and MJ Rodriguez as Blanca in a scene from Pose. Photo: FX via AP
She will soon be playing Sofia, the hard-working executive director of a non-profit funded by an absentee billionaire boss, in the Apple TV+ comedy series Loot, co-starring Maya Rudolph.
Love, hope, joy and inspiration are what gets you through the day … You have to keep instilling yourself with that and never let anybody tell you who you are or how you’re supposed to move through this world
Love, hope, joy and inspiration are what gets you through the day … You have to keep instilling yourself with that and never let anybody tell you who you are or how you’re supposed to move through this world.
6. She has ‘something to say’ when she sings
MJ’s new single, Something to Say. Photo: @mjrodriguez7/Instagram
Amid her other projects, she released her first song, Something to Say, in June 2021. Music is her other passion from a young age and she had vocal training from 11 until 18 when she enrolled in Berklee College of Music as a songwriting and performance major, according to People.
The song blends pop and disco funk and Rodriguez told People that it aims to “let people know, within the song, that no matter the colour of your skin, no matter the orientation, no matter the sexuality, no matter how you navigate through the world, we can really bring people together if we use our voices as one”.
7. She wants to leave a legacy of love
MJ Rodriguez’s Golden Globe win made history. Photo: @mjrodriguez7/Instagram
A Golden Globe under her belt, Rodriguez wants to continue moving forward to build a legacy. She told The Advocate that “I see myself being in a good amount of films”, but that she sees music as being where she can have the biggest impact.
“I see my musical career lasting to the end of time … hopefully being something that really influences people and something that is etched in the brains of people,” she says. “I want my music to last like Beyoncé, Michael Jackson, Katy Perry.”
MJ Rodriguez wants a music career more than anything. Photo: @mjrodriguez7/Instagram
“And I really do see it lasting that way … Not simply because of the music but because of the person that I am and how much love I put into it. And more than anything, how much love I put into the people who want to hear it,” she said.
“Love, hope, joy and inspiration are what gets you through the day … You have to keep instilling yourself with that and never let anybody tell you who you are or how you’re supposed to move through this world. You are the only person who can dictate that, so do it with grace.”