Season two of Ryan Murphy’s Pose, a groundbreaking TV series about New York City ballroom culture with a largely transgender cast, will apparently star beloved stage actress Patti LuPone and take place around March 1990, when Madonna released the “Vogue” track which introduced ballroom culture to the mainstream. (Though Madonna herself won’t actually star herself as a character in the show.)
At PaleyFest, the annual New York City TV festival, Murphy told trans actress MJ Rodriguez and gay actor Billy Porter that they’d both have plenty of scenes with LuPone, though Murphy stopped short of revealing what role the 69-year-old actress would play.
Murphy also revealed that trans journalist Janet Mock, Porter and trans musician and writer Our Lady J will all direct episodes in the upcoming season, reports Deadline.
“Vogue” makes an interesting start to the show’s second season as it dropped near the height of the ongoing HIV epidemic and was seen as a major career landmark for Madonna. Madonna’s sexually charged and unapologetic performance in the music video flew in the face of ’80s-era sexual conservatism.
Some of her backup dancers on the Blonde Ambition world tour (which featured “Vogue” among other crowd-pleasing hits) later contracted HIV and sued Madonna for outing them as gay in the resulting tour documentary Truth or Dare.
Pose itself also has the largest LGBTQ cast in television history, with 140 trans actors and crew members and 35 non-trans LGBTQ characters. Its five main trans actresses of color overcame abuse, rejection, discrimination and poverty to become TV’s newest breakout stars.
Read more at Queerty.com
