Michaela Jaé Rodriguez on Loot, Musicals, and Comedies

Michaela Jaé Rodriguez was seeking to do one thing just a little completely different when she discovered a few potential function in AppleTV+’s “Loot.” The actress rose to fame because of her breakout function as Blanca on “Pose.” For her work within the closing season, she acquired an Emmy nomination and gained the Golden Globe for finest actress, turning into the primary overtly trans actor to obtain both accolade.

Rodriguez tells hollywoodnewsflash.us that Sofia in “Loot” was precisely what she was in search of on the time. “I used to be similar to, ‘I hope I get this character. I hope so. She’s so completely different from Blanca. She’s so multifaceted and he or she’s additionally layered and I need folks to see the breakdown of her. I simply need it,'” she explains.

“I like enjoying a boss, unhealthy ass b*tch,” Rodriguez says. “Blanca was that, however she was the nurturing, caring, loving mom. Sofia is a younger, thriving, entrepreneur, who’s the COO . . . She has a typical that she desires to achieve and he or she’s going to get there it doesn’t matter what. I like that she would not play any video games.”

“Loot” is a comedy starring a few of the style’s largest and rising stars like Maya Rudolph, Adam Scott, Joel Kim Booster, and Ron Funches. Rodriguez had by no means starred in a comedy earlier than. “I used to be positively anxious coming into it,” she admits. However working with Rudolph, she says, was one among her desires ever since she was a child. “I bear in mind assembly her a few years in the past and us sharing a second the place I used to be similar to, ‘I hope I get to work with you someday.’ And have a look at how the celebs have aligned,” she says.

Rodriguez’s Sofia begins out as essentially the most critical particular person within the forged, contrasting the excesses of Rudolph’s Molly, a divorced billionaire who turns to the employees of her charity to fill her days with enjoyable. “Molly, does an excellent job at liberating numerous the ladies and the boys on that present,” Rodriguez says. “Sure, she’s a girl who’s privileged to have $87 billion, however there may be additionally a human behind all of that.” Thanks partially to Molly’s affect, Sofia ultimately opens up. Her excessive no-nonsense angle turns into its personal joke, with some devastatingly humorous one-liners. “There have been occasions the place I broke character,” Rodriguez admits, as a result of she was laughing so arduous at Sofia’s lack of filter. “That lady would not have any laughter in her. Generally I really feel like she may very well be a bit chilly.”

“It positively challenged me a bit,” she explains. Nonetheless Rodriguez can see one similarity between herself and Sofia: they’re each workaholics. “I like to work to a fault,” she says. “I take my craft critically, however I do not take it as critically as her, which I believe that holds her again.” However Sofia, she says, is perhaps a reminder that generally she must “buckle down” and never be afraid to work arduous.

However Rodriguez is not afraid of arduous work. Along with her work as an actor, she additionally has her burgeoning profession as a pop star beneath the title Michaela Jaé. A fast scroll by way of her Instagram reveals that she saved busy all Pleasure Month acting at occasions and parades. “I am positively excited to get [people] to essentially see how I can inform a narrative by way of my music and what I used to be skilled in really earlier than I used to be an actress,” she explains. “And to get to point out the love of what I do by way of the lyrics that I write.”

“It isn’t numerous ladies like me out right here who’re actually pushing to vary the narrative and I hope I can simply be one among them to do it,” Rodriguez says. Her first single, the disco-inspired pop monitor “One thing to Say,” was launched in summer time 2021. She says she’s hoping to launch her EP this summer time.

As for the longer term, there are many tasks on Rodriguez’s plate and her dream checklist. She has two films that she’s hooked up to, although they’re “nonetheless within the course of.” She would like to star in a superhero film, too. “I do know it is a arduous one to get into and I do know I am succesful,” she says.

Rodriguez got here up in musical theater — one among her first massive roles was as Angel in “Hire” off-Broadway — and he or she desires to proceed exploring that. In 2019, she starred as Audrey in a critically acclaimed Pasadena Playhouse Manufacturing of “Little Store of Horrors” (should you’ve by no means seen her performance of “Suddenly Seymour” on “The Late Late Present,” rectify that instantly). She would like to do “Hire” once more, this time as Mimi, and has her eyes on enjoying Glinda in “Depraved.” “I simply wish to be foolish and silly,” she explains. “Additionally, I believe Glinda is a really advanced character that folks do not actually notice till they see her story.”

One other style she desires to discover? Rom-coms. “I really feel most significantly that so many trans ladies must see love on the display screen,” she says. “In a method the place folks can simply see what it seems to be like and that it is not just like the stigmatized concept of what they’ve of their thoughts, however it’s really one thing regular that occurs each single day.”

“[It would be] humorous as all hell, her tripping down some stairs and falling and busting her butt after which, oh my gosh, she stumbles into the person of her desires,” she says. “I do know I might be silly in it, too.”

“Loot” releases new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+.