On Friday, Angelica Ross, an actress on Pose and the founder of TransTech, an incubator for LGBTQ talent, spoke with NBC News' Think. She weighed in not on her role in Mock's television series, but on a question that has framed the trajectory of both women's careers. Asked whether cisgender actors should be able to play trans characters, Ross spoke with clarity, conviction, and nuance:
What's hurtful is when you have portrayals like, you know, when you have someone like Jared Leto who accepts an award for Dallas Buyers Club after playing a trans woman standing in a full beard and looking fully cis male, it is communicating to our audiences that underneath all of that, it's still a man under that. And I feel like oftentimes with casting directors and directors that I've spoken with, myself and many other trans actors have been denied the opportunity because they tell us that we don't look trans enough and that the audiences won't get it, they'll be confused. And what's terribly painful and insidious about doing that is that what they're trying to say is, as the movie's going along and as the audience is watching, we don't want them to forget that there's a woman underneath there or there's a man underneath there.
And actually that's the point. We want you to forget. We want you to just see that this is a person, this is a human story. Forget what's in between their legs, forget how they identify and their gender. That's the objective of telling a good story. We should all be able to play a lot of different roles, but I would say until we reach that ideal we need to find ways of supporting one another that help to move society forward.