“Pose” arrived on FX in June 2018 with a premise no other drama had tried: a dance musical set inside New York’s ball culture, where Black and Latino LGBTQ performers competed for trophies and built chosen families called Houses. Created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals, the show ran three seasons and 26 episodes, ending June 6, 2021. It is a drama about the 1980s and 1990s, and about who got to be seen in them.
Trailer, via FX Networks.
Blanca and the House of Evangelista
The series moves between three worlds: the balls, the downtown social and literary scene, and the rise of the luxury Trump-era universe. Michaela Jaé Rodriguez plays Blanca, the character the show leans on hardest. Billy Porter’s Pray Tell is the ballroom’s emcee and its conscience. Dominique Jackson gives Elektra Abundance a cold, exacting pride. Indya Moore, Angel Bismark Curiel, Dyllón Burnside, Hailie Sahar and Jason A. Rodriguez fill out the ensemble.
The production team said it had assembled the largest transgender cast ever for a scripted series, with more than 50 transgender characters expected across the run. That claim is worth measuring against what actually reached the screen. It mostly holds.
A Cast Built, Then Rebuilt
Casting began in March 2017. By October 25, 2017, the show had announced Rodriguez, Moore, Jackson, Sahar and Angelica Ross alongside cisgender actors Ryan Jamaal Swain, Porter and Burnside. Evan Peters, Kate Mara, James Van Der Beek and Tatiana Maslany joined the next day.
Maslany exited that December after her part was redeveloped into a 50-year-old African-American woman. Charlayne Woodard took the role. Sandra Bernhard was announced to reprise her role as Nurse Judy in season two as a series regular. Patti LuPone was revealed to guest star in the second season.
The Emmy That Mattered
The first season drew largely positive reception, plus Golden Globe nominations for Best Television Series – Drama and for Porter as Best Actor. In 2019 Porter won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. He was the first openly gay Black man nominated for and to win in an Emmy lead acting category. The series was also nominated for Outstanding Drama Series that night.
What the Ballroom Cost
“Pose” is not a flawless show. Its first season spends real time on the downtown literary scene and the yuppie milieu, and those strands never earn the space they take. The ballroom scenes do.
The Numbers
- Network: FX
- First aired: June 3, 2018
- Finale: June 6, 2021
- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 26
- Genre: Drama
- Metacritic: 75/100
- Score: 7.5/10
The Three Seasons, Ranked
- Season 1 (2018) — the thesis, and the strongest single stretch
- Season 2 (2019) — premiered June 11, 2019, broader and more confident
- Season 3 (2021) — premiered May 2, 2021, a short, deliberate close
Where the Show Actually Landed
The Emmy is the fact that will outlast the rest. A category that had never put an openly gay Black man in its lead acting winners’ circle did so in 2019, and the show that put him there was about performers who were told they had no stage. That is not a small thing.
The weaker material matters less than it might. “Pose” was never trying to be a complete portrait of 1980s New York. It was trying to give the ballroom its due, and it did.
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