“I love drama soooo much,” says Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, drawing out the “o” like the soul singer that she is. “Drama is my sweet spot.”
Watch her recent turn in “Loot,” however, in which Rodriquez plays the foil to Maya Rudolph’s zany billionaire divorcée, and it’s apparent that the actress also has developed a flair for comedy.
“When you audition someone, you can immediately tell if they get the rhythm of a comedy,” says Matt Hubbard, who co-created “Loot” with Alan Yang. “And there are a lot of people who can’t do it. And we immediately saw that she got it. Her rhythm was so good.”
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Rodriguez made her mark as the empathic house mother Blanca in “Pose,” Ryan Murphy’s barrier-breaking hit drama about New York’s underground ballroom scene during the AIDS epidemic. She was a standout amid an all-star cast, which included Billy Porter, Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson and Angelica Ross, earning an Emmy nomination in 2021, the first transgender performer nominated in a lead acting category. (In 2019, Porter won an Emmy for lead actor in a drama for his role as Pray Tell in “Pose.”) The following year, Rodriguez was awarded the Golden Globe for her performance, another first.
Her character on the Los Angeles-set office comedy “Loot” is wound much tighter. Sofia Salinas, the uncompromising director of the charitable foundation headed by billionaire Molly Wells’ (Rudolph), is efficient, unemotional and seemingly allergic to displays of human emotion. In other words, the polar opposite of Rodriguez, whose mantra is compassion, acceptance and lots of self-love. Or, as she puts it: “My whole trajectory is l-o-v-e honey.”
The closest Sofia comes to any form of public sentimentality is when she’s singing Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing” at a karaoke bar. The character relishes a day canvasing for signatures in support of a new residential development for unhoused Angelinos (she names her clipboard “Maureen”) and takes pains not to reveal her Swiftie fandom (although she lives alone, she hides Taylor Swift records in Marvin Gaye record jackets).
Rodriguez meditates in the morning and decompresses with her Playstation 5. She is also into glam: She is the face of Charlotte Tilbury’s Pillow Talk makeup line and the first trans woman and American muse for the British beauty brand. Her newest campaign, which launched in early April, is for Plumpgasm lip gloss/color. Sofia would never put something called “Plumpgasm” on her face.
“I am upbeat, I am outgoing, I am silly,” Rodriguez says. “Sofia is not social and she knows she’s not social. She knows she is very straight-laced. The direness of Sofia, oh my god.”
The show feels like an L.A.-set version of “The Office.” Instead of sallow fluorescent lights and the ambient shabbiness of Scranton, Pa., the office drones of “Loot” inhabit a sleek, open floor plan with lots of natural light and avail themselves of gourmet snacks in a state-of-the-art communal kitchen. Molly, who netted an $87 billion settlement from her philandering tech billionaire ex (Adam Scott), channels her midlife crisis into an often ham-fisted attempt to comport herself as a benevolent philanthropist. Quiet luxury is not her thing — she wears an aqua blue fringed crepe caftan to the opening of a women’s shelter. Sofia is Molly’s tonal and sartorial opposite; her monochrome, fitted power suits act as armor, projecting an air of invincibility and protecting her from the hazards of uninvited hugs.
In casting Sofia, Hubbard and Yang — veterans of “Parks and Recreation,” “30 Rock” and the underrated and short-lived afterlife comedy “Forever,” which starred Rudolph and Fred Armisen — knew they needed someone who could hold their own as a counterpoint to Rudolph’s flamboyantly solipsistic .001 percent-er.
“It was a tough character [to cast],” Hubbard says. “The fear was that she would come off as a scold. But what Michaela brought to the role, essentially immediately, was a depth of kindness and empathy. You have to be really good to straddle that line — to be funny and to be mad and to be tough, but to also be likable in those moments.”
For Rodriguez, 33, the contrast between her own personality and Sofia’s helped define the character.
“I had to really examine Sofia, to see where the comedy timing would land. I had to learn how to not overdo it to just get a laugh, but to be authentic and innately genuine with the script,” she says. “I loved the juxtaposition between us and I dove in wholeheartedly.”
Hubbard and Yang used elements of Rodriguez’s biography to define the characters backstory: she is from Newark, N.J., and it’s clear from that karaoke scene in the second episode of season two that she is a singer. Rodriguez released her debut single, “Something to Say,” in 2021 and soon will release her first pop/R&B album. When she has down time, she’s writing music.
“So much of comedy is actually not the line as much as the reaction to the person who’s saying the line,” adds Hubbard. “She is really good at that. She is so present.”
And Rodriguez is still indulging her dramatic side in Murphy’s “American Horror Story: Delicate,” with Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian, which will have its anticipated series finale Wednesday on FX. (The series is also available on streaming platform Hulu.) Her character, Nicolette, a single mom who is probably a member of a satanic cult, is actually one of the less campy characters in a high camp horror drama written and directed by actress and playwright Halley Feiffer (“I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard,” “The Pain of My Belligerence,” “How To Make Friends and Kill Them”).
Feiffer is the first female showrunner on Murphy’s and Brad Falchuk’s long-running “AHS” anthology series. “Delicate” — which explores the “collective loss of [women’s] bodily autonomy through a supernatural lens,” says Feiffer — is also very timely in the wake of a wave of draconian new abortion laws since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
There is a sisterhood among the “Delicate” actresses, Rodriguez says. “I’ve always wanted to play a dark, magical character.” And to be part of a “strong female unit,” she adds, makes the work that much more meaningful.
“She has such range,” adds Feiffer, a “Pose” fan who wrote the character with Rodriguez in mind. (Before “Pose,” Feiffer had seen Rodriguez play Audrey in “Little Shop of Horrors” at the Pasadena Playhouse.)
“She was the heart and soul of ‘Pose,’ and it takes a lot to carry any show, especially a trailblazing show like that. What I love about her work on ‘Pose’ was just how achingly honest she was every single moment. You could read every emotion she had on her face in a way that was both subtle and so profound.”
After “Pose” wrapped in 2021 (and before Murphy called to enlist her for “Delicate”), Rodriguez feared that she would be typecast, that subsequent acting opportunities would inevitably feature her trans-ness.
“I felt lucky that I got an opportunity to be on a Ryan Murphy show and to be centered with all of these other beautiful trans women, but I am a trans woman of color,” she says. And the assumption held that certain kinds of acting roles were “probably not an option for me.”
The doubts rattling around in her head had quieted by the time she auditioned for “Loot.” (Sofia is not defined as trans or cis on the show.) But she still did not believe she would get the part. “I thought, this part is probably not for me,” Rodriguez recalls.
She credits the love and acceptance of her parents, especially her mother Audrey, for giving her the confidence to be herself.
“She is my rock, my pillar. She is always with me,” she says.
And she means that literally. When she relocated from New York to Los Angeles, Rodriguez moved her mother there too. She is her daughter’s regular plus-one at awards shows. And last year, at the Vanity Fair Oscar party, her mother was featured in a viral photo of dozens of Black stars including Laverne Cox, Michael B. Jordan and Tracee Ellis Ross, while Rodriguez was marooned on the red carpet posing for a bank of photographers.
Her mother, she says, had aspirations to be a singer, but her shyness prevented her from pursuing a career in the industry. And so when she recognized those aspirations in Rodriguez, she offered unconditional encouragement.
When Rodriguez was 11 years old, she joined the well-regarded summer youth performance workshop at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, performing in stagings of “Dreamgirls,” “The Pajama Game” and “Once Upon an Island,” among others. She attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she expanded her musical education. In 2011, when she was 19, she was cast as Angel (the character was originally written as a drag performer) in the off-Broadway revival of the musical “Rent,” which earned Rodriguez awards and recognition in New York’s theater scene. After “Rent” closed, Rodriguez took a hiatus from acting to transition.
When she returned to acting, she landed a series of small parts in series including “Nurse Jackie” and the “Sex and the City” prequel “The Carrie Diaries.” In 2021, she had a supporting role in director Lin-Manuel Miranda’s adaptation of “Rent” playwright Jonathan Larson’s autobiographical musical “Tick, Tick…Boom!” She was so adamant about being in the film that she did it while also filming the final season of “Pose.”
“I’m a workaholic,” she says. “There’s no halfwaying, there’s only going completely full throttle.”
Rodriguez’s talent and visibility have made her an ambassador and an inspiration for the LGBTQIA+ communities. And she is honored to wear that mantle. “I’ve come a long way. I’m very thankful for this year because I’m feeling so accomplished,” she says, the emotion cracking in her voice. “I’m humbled. And I do believe the industry is slowly opening up. People are looking past me as a trans woman and seeing me as interesting as a human being. And I know that ‘Pose’ would have not happened, ‘Transparent’ would have not happened, ‘Orange Is the New Black’ would not have happened and ‘Loot’ would have not happened. And it’s happening. And I know that I’m not going to stop.”
If “Loot” has been a bridge to a new genre for Rodriguez, her character also evolves this season when Sofia gets a boyfriend, played by British actor O-T Fagbenle. Rodriguez says she always wanted to be in a rom-com, and her scenes with Fagbenle show that she is adept at goofy sexual tension.
“Michaela is such a strong actress,” Hubbard says. “We really wanted to give her a meaty romance arc. Sofia is starting to change a little bit, she’s starting to realize that there needs to be other things in her life besides work. We also talked to her hair and makeup team about softening her look a little bit in season two; her hair is a little bit more flowing, her outfits kind of like loosen up a little bit.”
As Sofia, Rodriguez is slowly peeling back the layers of a somewhat repressed, very efficient and intimidating person. Maybe she would wear the Plumpgasim after all?