Janet Mock has had a pretty great month. A couple of weeks ago, the FX ballroom drama Pose—which Mock produces, writes, and directs for—returned to air and was quickly renewed for a third season. Today, the rising TV entrepreneur has made a deal with Netflix that makes her the first out trans woman to become a large-scale content creator at a major media company, Variety reports. The multimillion dollar deal reportedly gives Netflix exclusive rights to an upcoming TV series that she has yet to announce as well as first-pick rights to any film ideas she has in the next three years.
Pose co-creator Ryan Murphy (creator of Glee, Nip/Tuck and American Horror Story), promoted her to director mid-first season making her the first trans woman of color to direct for television. Murphy was soon mentoring her to become the creator of her own projects in Hollywood. “I never saw myself as an artist, and when I was given the power to direct, I showed myself what I could do,” Mock told Variety. Part of what makes Pose so revolutionary is its for-us-by-us community feel created by trans cast and crew members, and as a creator Mock has the ability to push that even further. She said she hopes her deal, “will be a huge signal boost, industrywide, to empower people and equip them to tell their own stories.”
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There aren’t a ton of details about the stories Mock is cooking up, but she did expand on one idea about a young trans woman going off to college and doesn’t talk much about her identity. “What does it mean for a trans girl to just be in college?” Mock said.. “Just have her on a journey, and not so focused on her identity or origin story. What does it mean to be in this body and this world and to share space with people who don’t yet know you?” Along with that college drama, she’s reportedly already working on”a reboot of a classic sitcom” and a series set in New Orleans post-slavery.
There’s no timeline yet, but just the prospect of more narratives like this being told is an exciting prospect. Murphy said it well in the Variety piece: “Janet is a cultural force, and the world needs her stories.”
