“Pose” Returns for Season 2 June 9: AIDS and “Vogue” to Set the Scene

Pose returns to television June 9 for a second season. When it does, the focus will expand to include the AIDS crisis and the launch of Madonna’s “Vogue.”

Few anticipated the impact of Madonna single, which made its debut on the Dick Tracy soundtrack in 1990. The track was an immediate and global smash. But in the world of ballroom, its arrival blasted the doors of ballroom right off its hinges.

Producer Ryan Murphy has been tight-lipped about what audiences can expect from the drama otherwise. Expect that it will continue to unfurl its family plot line of drag and trans “houses.” What makes Murphy’s tale unique is that these are families of spirit, not origin. In addition, numerous trans characters and actors of color flesh out the series.

Setting the Scene

Billy Porter, who plays MC Pray Tell on the show, is ready. “I’m just grateful that we’re finally telling the story of people of color,” he said in an exclusive interview with Metrosource. “We have made a lot of strides in LGBTQ storytelling, and for the first 25 years the mainstream version of it has mainly been about white people. I’m excited that people of color are at the front of our narrative and it’s being told by the people who were in it, who were from that space. The only thing I’m authorized to say because Ryan has said it is that Season 2 opens the day Madonna’s “Vogue” was released.”

Before “Vogue” and the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, ballroom was underground. Outside its insular world, not many knew what it was or involved. Murphy’s series adds color and depth to fill those empty pages in LGBTQ history.

AIDS and the activism of groups like ACT UP will also undoubtedly play a part in the narrative. Several characters have already been touched by the epidemic. Porter’s Pray Tell is poz and has already lost a boyfriend to the disease. Likewise Mj Rodriguez plays Blanca Rodriguez, an HIV-positive trans woman who founds the House of Evangelista.

The first new episode is set to air at 9 p.m. Sunday, June 9.

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