- I think if people took more time, I guess,
to be just more intentional, I don't think it's a big ask
in tweaking a little bit of how they move,
of what they're reading, of how they respond to things,
what they're watching.
And I think that's what changes shit for real, for real.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] The stories we see about ourselves
have the power to shape our future.
In this series we'll honor
some of the most groundbreaking moments
of queer Latine representation in TV and film.
Moments that grounded us in history, made us feel seen
and humanized our existence in front of,
and behind the camera.
Join us in uplifting the images, the artists, the stories,
the visions of us.
Transgender people have been utilizing their visibility
as tools in the fight for queer liberation.
Even before Sylvia Rivera, a trans activist marched
alongside Marsha P Johnson.
Decades later,
through the mediums of film and television,
trans and non-binary Latine artists
would continue this fight
in their own unique ways of course.
I gotta ask you something serious
- Do you think I pass?
- Hmm. With the best of them.
None of these girls can hold a candle to you
Angel, you're the prettiest thing I've ever seen.
You Dominicans got a slick tongue.
- Pose did a lot for me.
Pose for sure did a lot for me
and I think Pose so much for so many other people.
- Wow!
This is what it might mean to tell everybody
to sit down and finally the center trans folk.
And when I say everybody, I mean everybody
in the LGBTQIA plus community.
- It's incredible to be at the center of creating content
that uplifts the community.
The casting process on Pose was remarkable.
It was really incredible.
So we only had three trans women originally Blanca, Angel
and Electra.
And we met with all these incredible women who happened
to be having a trans experience and sitting and just talking
to them about their lives
and what they wanted to accomplish,
not just with their art and what their voices,
but by being a vessel to tell this story through the show.
And we fell in love with all of them.
- So beautiful to see a cast of black trans women exchanging
and loving on each other and existing in space
and growing.
- As a whole, the series became, it became a family drama.
It became a story about love and resilience
and showing up for one another.
And so it was in that process that I then found Blanca
because I think then at that point, I realized that Blanca
for me really is a way of honoring and saying, thank you
to every single woman, who ever co-parented me.
Blanca, maybe a trans Afro-Latina
but the reality is that she's every woman.
I think that's the reason why people love her so much
and why she's so universal.
- When the first episode of Pose came out
and I saw MJ Rodriquez and Indya Moore, I was like, oh wow.
For the first time, you have these two folk
on screen who are black, Latin American,
Caribbean, trans, and really there for each other
in a tender way.
And also in a way that doesn't negotiate with anything else
but their livelihood.
It felt incredible.
- Pose first came out, I went fucking crazy
and then Indya more so than MJ, but having a space
with both of them ended up becoming somebody
that really shaped a lot of shit for me.
In just every exchange, I feel like they carry so much.
And to see that translated on screen
in both characters is just so powerful.
- The greatest lesson I took away
from the Pose casting process was that,
there was an abundance of incredible trans talent
out in the world.
And what the community needs is for someone to invest
in that talent.
For someone to say you are absolutely worthy
and to provide an incredible opportunity
for all of those incredible gifts to shine.
- The first time I watched Pose, I went fucking crazy.
I went so crazy that I let a bunch of baby gays move
into my house and tried to do the whole house mother shit.
But I was I'm Mother Blanca.
I'm finna get to it.
I had everybody in school, had everybody with jobs.
I was on it, I was very much on it.
- The show is all about, it's my way of telling trans people
and queer people of color that you are loved,
you are worthy, I see you.
You deserve to take up space unapologetically
and don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
- All right next to her is the incomparable Jennifer Lopez
is with us and honey, I got your rider.
- Compliment, compliment, question.
- Yes. - Thank you.
- Let me tell you something.
This is the biggest secret in the drag world
is the fact that trans women are so stunning.
The trans, I guess, glamour and just the illusion
of that high glamour is something
that was extremely desired
and something that was extremely loved
in the club scene for so long.
There was always sort of like this competition
between drag queens who are cis-men
and trans women who perform in the drag show.
There was always like this sort of little competition.
And so when I came out on the scene
and I started performing, I was coached and embraced by all
of the beautiful trans show girls.
And that was my calling
because that was what I was most attracted to.
The audacity to go on stage and put together a show
and live in their truth and exude that power.
I'm a fan, number one fan.
- So Carmen Carrera first entered the media sphere
from her appearance on RuPaul's Drag Race.
She was one of a very fan favorite.
And one of the things
that I think we don't often talk about
but we should is that,
Carmen Carrera in so many ways was
an honest to goodness groundbreaker.
- When I did Drag Race, I wanted to represent that,
that female power and that lane that exists
in the drag show but that's not talked about.
It's always kept a secret for some reason.
And you're giving that's show girl power that really only
a trans woman could hold
because we're in our own lane.
Without the fear and without the pushback from the world.
We just wanna be in our power.
We just wanna be in our light.
And so I was able to take all of that passion
and I was able to put that on a higher platform
for more visibility 'cause there's a lot more women like us.
So many more women like us.
- I remember the first time I saw the clip
of Carmen walking the runway and I was in awe.
Carmen's one of those people that you meet
and you're nervous because you're like, oh my gosh,
she's so pretty.
And she's got this aura about her.
- [Announcer] Carmen Carerra.
- Hey, hey.
So when I started performing in drag,
I wanted to give that illusion.
I wasn't ready to transition just yet,
but I wanted to give that essence and that female like vibe
because I always felt like that as a little kid.
I always was like wanted to be like the J-Lo
or the Selena, or like.
I remember performing in front of like my court,
as a kid on my porch.
I was always wanting to be that.
And so I had opportunity in the Drag Show.
So growing up, I was just exposed to the Maury Show
and like these sensationalized ideas
of who trans people were as a deception.
Especially the Jerry Springer Show,
it almost made it okay.
And almost you expected people
to commit acts of violence against trans people.
So in my youth, I would say that I wasn't 100% sure
of who I was and the lack of representation
on television made it worse, made me feel more lost
and confused because I couldn't even figure it out.
And once I realized who I was maybe
in my early 20s, me personally,
I had this ambition to prove these people wrong.
To show them what a trans person can be,
what a trans person can accomplish
and how much a trans person can love.
- She is, if you've ever seen Carmen Carrera on camera
there's nothing like it.
And I think we don't spend enough time talking about that
or talking about the fact that she was for many people
the first public trans Latina that they knew.
Because so much has already changed even just
in a decade from when we first got to know her.
- For me, it's just about being a human being
and being able to take my humanity and my story
and turn it into something that could create change.
- There was a push, there was a change.org petition
to make Carmen Carrera a Victoria's Secret Angel.
And it got over 40,000 signatures.
Of course she did not ever get
to walk the Victoria's Secret runway.
But I think even in not being able to walk
the Victoria's Secret runway,
what that did was it changed how we talked
about models and how we talked about beauty.
We understand that beauty for women means all women.
And I believe that that transition,
that change in conversation is directly out of that moment.
It is directly out of the petition for Carmen
to be able to walk as an Angel.
- So I think for me, my driving force was always,
I need to get my story out there.
Even though I knew that it was a huge risk,
I feel like I didn't care.
I was willing to put my life and my story on the line
because I knew that it was something that needed to be done.
And so it was a sacrifice that I made
for my community and just for people to be able
to see that we do have genuine love.
We do have real love.
And we do have purity in there
and it just gets overshadowed
by other people's judgment and our reaction to it.
- You okay?
- Did you hear what that lady said to me at the bakery?
- About our kids?
Yeah.
- She thought we were straight Jake.
- So what she thought we were straight?
- You're excited.
- No I'm not.
- You're passing and you're excited.
- What's wrong with that?
- I swear to God, if you started on your gender
as a construct speech right now,
I will throw this cake at you.
- Look, all I'm saying is we know we're queer.
No one's taking that from us.
There's that thing that I don't know if writers say,
that artists say, I've just heard it throughout my life
where the more specific you get, the more universal you get.
And I just wanna live by that in my art
and the things that I'm a part of
is that the more I pull from my own story
and the more of myself, and then the people around me,
the more it's relatable.
And I think that the industry doesn't see it that way
or maybe they just see it in a really misconstrued way
where it's ends up being one color or one gender,
the face front of these stories.
But none of that is true.
This is really what it is and it's a ton of color.
It's a ton of just difference.
And I want that in the industry
and I want that to be amplified
and I want it to just be shown
and it not be this phenomenon.
- In the last eight years, there's been an increase
in representation specifically in trans representation,
black and brown trans representation.
There, I think that the stories are starting
because they're allowing trans folks into the writing rooms.
The stories are starting to sound
and look more authentic.
- I hear them moving forward Hollywood, the media,
any form of cultural production needs to understand
that trans folk are not just gonna stop existing.
And therefore trans folk need
to be accounted for at all times.
- I think it's important for trans people
to be forefronted.
You exist here in a very specific space
that I've put you in.
And I feel like that happens
because it's not trans people doing the writing.
- I think it's crucial
to see ourselves represented authentically
in television and film
because it's the way in which we have a mirror
to see ourselves reflected back to us.
I would encourage and challenge people
to realize that any character could be any gender.
Trans, intersex, cis, we need to just realize
that a trans person can be a superhero in a movie.
And I think people are ready for that too.
- It's like, we can talk about representation all day long.
We can do it.
We can say it's important, but unless it's there,
unless I'm seeing it, it doesn't mean anything.
And I think the people that just talk about it,
think that it's like this cool quirky 21st century thing
of the now that we should just do it
because this is the wave
but it just means so much more.
'Cause those are those same people who think it's a wave
are those same people that have seen themselves
over and over and over again
and have no problem imagining themselves
being super heroes, being villains,
being things that are completely outside of themselves
and they see it every day.
They see it all the time
because we live in a world that allows for that.
And so when we get these bursts of queer moments
of just like any marginalized representation,
it just hits different.
- Life is big, life is diverse,
our society is extremely diverse.
So what we wanna see on TV and film,
is kind of a reflection of that.
And we haven't really seen much of it.
It's always been this very cookie cutter thing.
I don't know if it was, I mean,
it may have been to protect protect the citizens
from what is real.
But I think that we're in an age right now
where we're kind of flipping that on its head.
We're in an age of information where everyone wants
to know the truth and they wanna see the truth.
- I do believe there's a revolution,
a cultural revolution happening right now in film and TV.
I think we are primed for there to be an explosion
of more trans and more queer, more non-binary,
more intersex people in the next few years.
- The end of the day it's strictly important
to tell these stories, queer, Latinx stories,
because they exist and to continue to live in these worlds
and these conservative mindsets that they don't is so odd.
And you miss out on so much
when you have such a narrow view of things.
And queerness, it's cool, it's so cool.
It's so freeing.
And so then I don't know to be queer, to be Latinx,
to just be, why would you not want that at your table?
(upbeat music)