Beyond the Tipping Point is Them's Spring 2022 cover package about how Black trans actresses are reshaping Hollywood. Featuring Laverne Cox, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, and Eva Reign — three actresses at pivotal moments in their careers who represent hard-won progress and the future of entertainment. Read more here.
Michaela Jaé Rodriguez is a self-admitted workaholic. “I guess that’s a Capricorn thing,” the actress jokes to me on a recent phone call. “My mom and dad were workaholics when they were younger, so I feel like it’s just been ingrained in me ever since I was a child. That’s the only thing I saw, so whether it be me working as an actor or me working at McDonald’s or me working in a cubicle, I always knew I had to work in order to sustain myself.”
Thankfully, that work ethic has served Rodriguez well. In just a few short years, the New Jersey-born 31-year-old has gone from a relative unknown, mostly appearing in one-off roles on shows like Luke Cage and The Carrie Diaries, to a bona fide household name, with a freshly-shined Golden Globe trophy to prove it. And though Rodriguez’s career started to take off as early as 2017, when the actress appeared as a lead in the Tribeca Film Fest hit Saturday Church, her meteoric rise in Hollywood can mostly be credited to the towering performance she gave as Blanca Evangelista on FX’s breakout hit Pose, where she injected grit and heart into a character many would eventually cite as one of their first onscreen encounters with an HIV+ Black Latinx trans woman.
Pose was a landmark series in terms of representation, employing what is, to date, still the largest cast of trans performers ever on a scripted television show. Like Rodriguez, most of these performers were relatively new to the industry; for many, in fact, Pose marked their first IMDb credit. The Emmy-winning series opened up doors for a marginalized group not typically known for its access, but as a show expressly about this community, it was also designed to do just that. Whether this momentum could sustain itself beyond the show was another matter entirely.
Rodriguez acknowledges this conundrum herself, telling me, “I honestly didn't think that another opportunity would happen for me because of my transness. I was always beating myself up thinking that a trans woman of color would not be offered a [second] opportunity to be the centerfold in another television show. Pose was going to be the only opportunity.”
But Rodriguez’s worries were in vain, since her work schedule hasn’t seemed to slow down since Pose’s conclusion last summer. Just several months later, she appeared in a key role in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s critically-acclaimed musical tick, tick…BOOM! A sprightly love letter to its original composer, Jonathan Larson, the Netflix film was a hit amongst Broadway obsessives and Hollywood insiders alike, marching its central star, Andrew Garfield, all the way to the Oscars main stage. It was a proud trajectory for Rodriguez to witness, especially considering all she went through to help bring Miranda’s vision to life.
In another instance of quintessential workaholic behavior, the actress volunteered to shoot the film concurrently with the final season of Pose. And while pulling double-duty would naturally take its toll on anyone, tick, tick…BOOM! held a special place in Rodriguez’s heart. The actor considered the project to be a full-circle moment — coincidentally, her first real “job” in the industry was playing Angel in the 2011 award-winning off-Broadway revival of Rent, the most famous musical Larson authored.
After all this, it’s understandable why Rodriguez needed a break. It’s a Thursday afternoon when we speak, and the actress is in sunny Los Angeles where she’s currently enjoying a much-deserved staycation. It’s the first recess she has allowed herself after almost three years of nonstop work, and throughout our conversation, she gleefully talks about her plans to soak up some sun on the beach alongside her boyfriend, screenwriter Stephen Gimigliano.
But she knows she must enjoy this moment while it lasts. Before long, it’ll be back to the grind. In fact, just days before our chat, the actress was celebrating the first official look at her next project: the upcoming Apple TV+ comedy Loot. Starring four-time Emmy-winner Maya Rudolph as a recently-divorced aimless billionaire, the Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard-created series will see Rodriguez playing Sofia, the hard-working executive director of a nonprofit.
Rodriguez was drawn to the high-profile series for a number of reasons, but chief among them was the opportunity to play someone completely different from Blanca, who she initially needlessly worried would be conflated with Michaela Jaé. Though Rodriguez is extremely proud to be trans, the actress relished the chance to step into the shoes of a character who wasn’t defined on those terms. Pose offered viewers at home an eye-opening peek into what it means to live life as a trans woman, specifically, but in playing Sofia, Rodriguez feels she can be a conduit for a broader exploration of womanhood across the spectrum. For once, the assignment was to just portray a strong woman. The actress describes Sofia as an AOC-type figure who’s “second to the CEO of this company.”
“[Sofia] is somebody who is no-games and no-bullshit,” Rodriguez boasts proudly, taking a second after to pardon her French. “She takes her job seriously and is very career-driven. She’s adamant, focused, and very to-the-point. Stern and strict, but dry as hell and fun.”
With Loot set to premiere in just two short months, Rodriguez thought it a good time to reassess where she currently saw herself professionally, which she proceeded to do through a cheekily clever metaphor. “If I can speak in terms of school, I would say that when Pose happened, going through the first, second, and third season, I still felt like I was in my freshman and sophomore years of the industry. I was really learning the industry and learning how I should navigate within it,” she explains. “And my freshman and sophomore years? Honey, they were hard. But I still graduated and moved into my junior year. I’ve had the exposure and I understand what my goal and purpose is as far as being in the limelight, and now, I’m realizing the sky’s the limit.”
A real sign that Rodriguez had entered a new chapter was the official launch of her music career, kickstarted by the release of her debut single “Something to Say” last summer. “It was almost like an explosion waiting to happen,” she tells me about finally unleashing the catchy song onto the world after sitting on it for almost a year. “I felt so liberated. I felt so elated. I was so happy because people finally got to see the girl who wanted to perform and what she can give.” At this, she takes the briefest of pauses. “And listen, honey. I'm going to toot my own horn. It wasn't mediocre, okay? I never want to be a mediocre bitch!”
The response to the song was uniformly positive, with many praising its funky disco vibes while gagging over its equally glorious music video, which found the performer effortlessly gliding through some surprisingly complex choreography in a visual that was just as breezy and laidback as the summer anthem it accompanied. Rodriguez was especially delighted by the number of people who resonated with the song’s core messaging. “I feel like I have something to say, too,” she recalls fans telling her after the release.
“I was like, yes, because that’s exactly what I want y’all to feel through my music,” she tells me. “I want y’all to relate to my music and move through it and then go out into the world and feel like you can change the world because you’ve listened to it.”
“Something to Say” urges its listeners to “take the walls down [and] break the ceiling,” so it’s no surprise when Rodriguez pivots the conversation over to empowering the next generation. “I want to leave a legacy,” she asserts at one point. “And not just for myself, but for the girls that are going to come behind me. The door is open now, honey! Girls are going to be trailblazing right after me.”
As Rodriguez conquers new ground on TV and in the music industry, she wants to make sure she’s always paying it forward. “I always say, ‘I never want to be just ‘the one’ to do it,’” she says. “I’m thankful to be ‘the first,’ but I don’t want to be the last. I want there to be other girls that constantly keep coming.” True to the tenets of sisterhood, Rodriguez believes there’s more than enough room for everyone to thrive. “Honey, I see myself having a long-lasting career while sitting at the table with every single last one of my trans sisters.”
When asked what a younger version of herself would say about her success today, Rodriguez draws from the lyrics to an upcoming song, “Started From,” which is slated to appear on the “EP-slash-album” she plans to release sometime in the very near future. “Girl, this is the time for you to look back and see how you have to pick up the pieces and trace back the trail of where you started from,” she tells me. “I wrote that song simply because you have to always trail back to your younger self and really reminisce about the process and how hard it could have been. And it was very hard for me as a young person being trans and queer at that time.”
But things change. Now, Rodriguez has a Golden Globe win and an Emmy nomination to her name, and can realistically imagine herself nabbing similar accolades in the future. (“I’m not a cocky person at all, but I definitely see myself winning more awards,” she says.) She’s in a highly-anticipated star-studded comedy and is currently attached to two films she can’t talk about yet. (“Honey, you don’t know how badly I wish I could clap these gums about them,” she jokes.) And to boot, she’s fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming an R&B star — and doing so all on her own terms. No matter where she actually “started from,” she’s ended up somewhere beyond her younger self’s wildest imagination.
Near the end of our call, I ask Rodriguez how she plans to measure the length of this latest phase of her career. If everything up until this point has been her freshman and sophomore year, I inquire, then how will she know when she has become a senior?
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to get to my senior year, honey. I might have to be 40, 50 years old,” she responds. “When I get to 40, 50 years old, I want to be able to sit back and look at the television screen and see a multitude of so many different types of individuals, and say, ‘I'm thankful I was one of the people that was a part of that.’ Not the one, but one of them, because let’s be very clear: this is not about me. There’s many of ‘me’ out there.”
In short, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez wants her junior year to be her longest. “This time, I think it’s seminal, and I’m thankful for it. I’m thankful for my creator for putting me in the position I am in.”
And for the time being, she’ll just keep on working.
Photographer: Myles Loftin
Stylist: Shibon Kennedy
Set Designer: Jeremy Reimnitz
Hair: Vernon Francois
Makeup: Allan Avendano
Production: Hyperion LA
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