My favorite scene to direct, and the most challenging location, was the scene with all of the girls in the shop. Did you take any inspiration from your past experience of “bossing around” your own siblings for those scenes? Siblings argue, mothers scold their children to clean up their rooms, they share meals together. On Pose, the family dynamics in different Houses feel so real. This interview contains spoilers for episode six of Pose. Mock opened up to W about her Pose directorial debut, stanning for Janet Jackson, and why she still tries to get eight hours of sleep every night. Her directorial debut, the series’ sixth episode titled “Love Is The Message,” marks a turning point in the series-it is a heartbreaking account of the epidemic of HIV/AIDS that swept away the lives of thousands of LGBT people in the 1980s and 1990s, but also serves as a perfect example of why and how transgender and queer people can and should exist at the center of their own stories on a major television network like FX.
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Despite her hesitation, Murphy’s encouragement worked, and Mock ended up standing behind the camera, directing an episode of one of the most radical series currently on television. Mock is an accomplished memoirist, has held a successful editorial career, and hosted a weekly series on MSNBC called So POPular, but she had never directed anything-not even a short film or scene in a play-before joining Pose.
Soon Mock joined the writers’ room with Canals, Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Our Lady J, and Murphy told Mock he wanted her to direct the season’s “most emotional script.” Pose is home to not only the largest transgender cast on television, but also an unparalleled number of trans talent working behind the scenes. Enter Steven Canals, an Afro-Latino queer man from the Bronx who wrote the script that would eventually become Pose while he was in graduate school. The television auteur wanted to adapt Paris Is Burning as a series, but felt weird about serializing the lives of real people. About a year ago, Mock met with Ryan Murphy while he directed American Crime Story: Versace. It was never anything that I ever thought I wanted to do,” she admitted. But no, I had no formal directing training or anything like that. “I’m the middle of three, and needed a lot of attention so I directed everyone on where they needed to go based on my needs. Pose has its moments of glitz and glam, but at the heart of the show is a riveting family drama. “I directed my siblings,” Janet Mock confessed with a laugh, when asked if she had ever tried her hand at directing before being tapped to produce, write, and direct for Pose, the FX series that chronicles the 1980s New York City ballroom culture scene, and the intersecting lives of trans and queer Black and Latinx youth at the center of it.