So I have AIDS now?
Well, it's, it's just a number.
It's a way of flagging how much care a patient needs.
Season two, we're really leaning
in with the subject matter.
Trans women living with HIV, gay men living with HIV.
There's a lot of death this season, a lot of funerals.
Death is in the air.
It's 1990, New York City.
We're in the middle of a plague.
[SOMBER MUSIC]
[SOBS]
No.
He was so young.
Just barely started living.
I don't know how much more of this I can take.
The show opens at Hart Island, which is something that I had
never heard of, which is an island
on the outskirts of New York.
It was initially a tuberculosis ward.
And it became the place for unclaimed bodies, unmarked
graves, graves with a number.
The fear was that if these bodies were buried
near residential communities, then
maybe HIV was going to seep into the, you know, soil.
And it would get into the water.
And so they just wanted the bodies to be away.
Each one of these heart shaped rocks
represents someone buried here, left by someone left behind.
So what now?
We pray for strength.
To keep fighting.
[SOMBER MUSIC]
I am HIV positive.
And I still feel the stigma against people
living with HIV and AIDS.
[SOMBER MUSIC]
I, I've seen my sisters pass from suicide, from HIV.
And I feel very lucky to be 40.
I feel the spirit of those that we've lost with this show.
When I create, when I write, when I'm producing,
I think that a lot of these characters
wouldn't make it to my age.
And I feel very lucky to be living in the time
that I live in.
We have medication.
Undetectable is un-transmittable,
which means that if you're on medication,
and you're taking it properly, you cannot
expose other people to HIV.
I believe the end of this disease
begins with the end of the stigma towards the disease.
If people can go get tested, and not feel any shame
about getting tested, about getting on medication,
then we'll end the disease.
That's simple and true.
But in order to end this stigma, we
need to humanize the lives of people
living with HIV and AIDS.
I think Pose does that.
There is still so much stigma around the disease.
Candy, for one, her story sort of represents those folks who
felt so much stigma from the disease,
that they refused to reach out for help,
or they refused to tell anyone that they were
challenged with the disease.
And so Candy ends up leaving this world.
And telling not a single soul that she was HIV positive.
And I know that there are a lot of girls who are thinking
they're probably going to take that secret
to the grave with them.
A lot of people, either they blocked themselves from that
message because it's too much.
And they don't want to have to rehash
the past that they had to live.
And then there are some, mostly the younger
generation, who hasn't heard anything about the epidemic.
So they don't feel the need to really learn anything.
They're out here not protecting themselves,
and you know, doing things accordingly.
And I think that's what Pose is doing.
Not only are we entertaining, but we're, you know,
educating these kids on how to live life again.
And also telling them not to repeat history.
Negative.
[SOMBER MUSIC]
With our show putting such a spotlight on HIV and AIDS,
I've seen it, from our audience-- remove the stigma.
I've seen people going to get tested.
It makes you realize how important it is for us to tell
this story because all of these folks
lives depend on us telling this story.
And depend on us reaching it to the point where
we end the epidemic of HIV.
Where it's no more.
Where all of this work, and all these lives were not in vain.
[SOMBER MUSIC]
I'm scared.
To die?
Or to love?
[SOMBER MUSIC]
[PILLS RUSTLE]
[SOMBER MUSIC]