Pose star Mj Rodriguez has earned her first Emmy Award nomination, making history as the first transgender actor to earn a nomination for a leading role.
On Tuesday, the 30-year-old earned a nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Drama Series ahead of the 2021 Emmys broadcast later this year.
Mj has been widely lauded for her role as Blanca Evangelista on the hit FX series.
The evocative series finale, which aired in the US earlier this year, had Mj’s Blanca delivering a powerhouse performance rife with emotion and even a rendition of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.
The Emmys received plenty of backlash last year for overlooking Mj’s performance on Pose.
While fellow star Billy Porter received his second Emmy nod for his role on the show in 2020, BuzzFeed noted in July 2020 that “none of the women and non-binary actors on the show got that same honour.”
“Without Miss Blanca at the helm, Pose just wouldn’t be what it is today,” the outlet stressed.
Later in 2020, Mj penned an op-ed for Emmys.com about being a trans, Afro-Latina woman “held in a box for so long” and not seeing herself properly represented within the film and television communities.
“There’s just not enough being done within the Black and Latino communities as far as representation is concerned, behind and in front of the cameras,” she wrote, imploring the Academy to “make change.”
“Diversity has always been pushed in my household so not seeing it fully exhibited and embraced breaks my heart. I do feel like there’s a lot of exposure around our identities as people of colour, but there’s still much that needs to be done.”