Michaela Jaé Rodriguez: ‘Trans actors playing cis roles isn’t a question anymore’

In 2018, as the first season of Ryan Murphy’s groundbreaking series Pose hit screens, its leading star Michaela Jaé Rodriguez had a request: Hollywood should let trans actors play cis roles.

“We’ve been asking for it for a very long time. It’s something that we have always been able to do,” she told MTV. It was a bold statement for an actress launching her first major TV role; one aimed at an industry that had nominated Eddie Redmayne for an Oscar for playing a trans woman in The Danish Girl just two years prior.

Rodriquez stood her ground, made history as the first trans star to win a Golden Globe for her role as trans house mother Blanca Evangelista in Murphy’s queer drama about New York’s ‘80s ballroom culture, and now, cis roles are hers for the taking.

Or, one better: it simply doesn’t matter whether her characters are cis or trans. In Skincare, a gritty thriller film helmed by director Austin Peters and starring Elizabeth Banks, she plays Marine, the PA and PR agent to celebrity aesthetician Hope Goldman (Banks).

Marine is Hope’s anchor when her new skincare launch flops, when rival beauty guru Angel (Luis Gerardo Méndez) opens up a salon opposite hers, and when she becomes the victim of a sexually exploitative online stalking campaign that spirals towards a deadly end. It’s a small part, but it speaks to Rodriguez’s big career wish: Marine isn’t explicitly cis, but she’s not explicitly trans, either.

Does she think Hollywood has excelled towards a new stage of trans representation? “I mean, I don’t know,” the actress, 32, wonders aloud in a sweet and softened New Jersey accent, via a Zoom call. “You know, it’s funny, I don’t really look into it as much. The only thing I know is to exist and show up.”

That said, Rodriguez recognises how the roles she’s offered now have evolved in recent years. She’s starred in American Horror Story and Apple TV’s Loot, and like Marine, her characters haven’t revolved around trans identity. In 2019, she became the first trans woman to star as Audrey, a cis character, in a major production of Little Shop of Horrors. So yes, times are changing. In her eyes, it’s all thanks to Pose.

For trans women, “it was a groundbreaking show” that “showcased what we went through and how we worked hard to create a space where there was understanding instead of disassociation,” Rodriguez says. Indeed, Pose cast the largest number of trans stars as series regulars in TV history, building a bridge between representation lows of The Danish Girl and Transparent, and today’s highs of Heartstopper and Sex Education.

“It worked so much that it opened up space for the cast members as humans, outside of these characters, to speak and have a platform.”

Murphy’s show helped prove Rodriguez right; she’s a formidable actress regardless of her characters’ gender identity. “I think we have definitely grown into a space where that is not a question anymore. It’s definitely a topic of discussion, but it’s not in the actors; space, I’ll tell you that much,” she notes unequivocally. Viewers can make their assumptions about who she’s depicting, but it doesn’t matter. Rodriquez has got the power to simply say that her characters “encompass what women go through as a whole”.

“I think what we’re working towards now is more agency and more open space for trans voices and trans people… to obviously have more parts and have more space to express different types of characters, just like any other person on this planet.”

Growing up in Newark, New Jersey, Rodriguez knew she wanted to become an actress aged seven, around the same time she began questioning her gender. A stint at several music, arts and performance colleges followed, including at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, where she landed a role as Angel Dumott Schunard in Rent. Fredi Walker-Browne, one of Rent’s original actresses, witnessed her perform the part, and encouraged her to try out for an Off-Broadway adaptation of the queer musical. She bagged the role and as a result two years later, her first award: the Clive Barnes Award.

Angel is known for her soft-hearted caregiver role, taking in fellow lead Tom Collins after he’s violently attacked. Blanca in Pose is similarly pragmatic yet careworn, as she deals with the vile transphobia of the era with equanimity while providing a home for the runway Evangelista clan. Even Marine in Skincare acts as a mother figure, propping up Hope through her trauma. It seems to be a role Rodriguez slips into with ease.

“I think that’s what I am naturally suited, and I’m not gonna lie, I do love it,” she says, sounding as though she’s smiling on the other end of the phone.

Marine, as a warm on-screen presence, “encompasses a part of me,” she adds, though the PA makes moves Rodriguez certainly wouldn’t.

When Hope’s anonymous cyberstalker ups the game, using her photos to advertise her as a sex worker and causing her clients to leave loyalty in the dust and go elsewhere, Marine doesn’t quite respond with urgency. “I would literally have left and taken my friend out of there,” Rodriguez assures me. In an early scene, Marine battles with her conscience about whether to go over to a man’s house for a hookup. “I mean, I loved that as a character, that’s very different [from] me, because I would never,” she laughs.

Skincare is inspired – loosely – by a real life case. In March 2014, “facialist to the stars” Dawn DaLuise was arrested and accused of a murder-for-hire plot against new aesthetician on the block, Gabriel Suarez. She, incorrectly, believed he was behind a terror campaign that saw her contact details plastered online, claiming she was searching for someone to fulfil her sexual fantasies.

Like Hope, DaLuise’s phone was inundated with calls and messages, and her tires slashed (DaLuise was eventually acquitted of the plot; a friend and client of the beautician later plead guilty to stalking her). Unlike DaLuise, Hope does take drastic action to ensure her assumed stalker gets a grisly punishment.

Surprisingly, Rodriguez was and is unaware of the story’s details – “If you can inform me to what happened, that would help me, maybe,” she asks – but it wasn’t the true crime element that drew her in, anyway.

“I don’t condone the events of this character in this film versus, obviously, the true events, but I understand why the actions would be taken simply because of the circumstances at hand,” she says carefully. Though Hope arrives at the end of the film in a far more morally questionable position than where she started, as a viewer, our sympathies are with her.

“A woman’s scorn is like no other, especially when pushed to all limits. And you have to have grace for that when you poke the bear,” Rodriguez concurs. 

Almost every man Hope encounters in the film attempts to exploit her, be it financially, sexually, or professionally. In one of the film’s most harrowing scenes, a man becomes physically aggressive when he realises Hope isnt seeking someone to fulfil a rape fantasy, as a fake online ad suggested. It’s a tough watch. Rodriguez is keen to point out that not all of the film’s men are quite so vile, yet she agrees that most of the portrayals are “complete and great depictions of how a specific group of [men] work, and I thought it was wonderfully displayed”.

Skincare arrives alongside a number of other high-profile films centring violence against women, from Blake Lively’s headline-grabbing summer hit It Ends With Us to Anna Kendrick’s recent directional debut, Woman of the Hour.

It’s difficult to suggest that the accentuation of these stories is having a real-world impact in a post #MeToo landscape, with chief p*ssy-grabber Donald Trump heading back to power imminently, and Hollywood heavyweights from Sean Combs to Neil Gaiman being accused of multiple sexual assault offences in recent months (both men deny all accusations against them). But is the industry at least beginning to grapple with how pervasive the issue is? 

“I think we are. I think the discussions are now happening more rapidly than ever, and I’m so happy that they’re revving up,” says Rodriguez. “But to your point, I think it’s so important to constantly tell these stories on film to show what the realities are and maybe what kind of protection we may also need, whether it be from another man in our space, or when it comes to us protecting ourselves.”

To Rodriguez’s point, not all men are the issue, but more men should be coming forward as part of the solution, even if that’s simply through elevating women’s stories. Skincare’s director, writers, and producers are all men, and Hollywood’s glaring gender disparity problem aside, it is a microscopic positive to see them throwing themselves behind a story like Hope’s.

“They’re not like the other men that are out here, they’re quite different,” Rodriguez stresses of the film’s creatives. “We’re lucky to have men that still want to put us to portray these characters and still be vocal about, you know, not just the nuances, but the discourse that happens between the genders, whether they are trans or cis.”

There will likely be discourse aplenty surrounding women, trans and cis, over the next four years. We’re speaking less than a week after Trump’s devastating re-election, and though there isn’t time to get into the nitty gritty of it, it looms over our call.

Rodriguez has to take the wins where she can, and she’s choosing to take pride in seeing the pendulum swing in favour of more trans actresses thriving. At the Emmy Awards back in September, trans Baby Reindeer breakout star Nava Mau was in contention for a supporting actress gong, just three years after Rodriguez became the first ever trans actress to be nominated for a major acting award at the ceremony. That must feel good.

“It does, even in the craziest times, right? It’s still changing. There’s still great change that’s happening. And that’s definitely what keeps me hopeful,” she says, preparing to deliver a genuinely rousing speech.

“In this time, I realise my existence alone creates sheer discord, no matter if I say something out loud or not. And for that, I will continue to live. For that, I will continue to create. For that, I will continue to fight for women’s rights. For that, I will continue to be aligned with art that influences and makes other people happy, a part of all different types of demographics, different types of orientation, different types of cultures, ethnicities,” she continues, without breath.

“For that, simply alone, knowing that my existence creates sheer discourse, that encourages me to not stop.”

Skincare is available on digital release now.

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