As if the cast wasn’t already stacked enough, Pose is adding another big name to its cast list in season 2. During a Pose panel at PaleyFest on Saturday, the show’s co-creator Ryan Murphy revealed that a huge Broadway legend will be guest starring in the sophomore season.
“We’ve come up with this great role for Patti LuPone,” Murphy said, according to Variety.
“She loves the show and we wrote this part and she said, ‘Yes, I want to do it,’ so she’s coming to play with us in a couple weeks.”
“She loves the show and we wrote this part and she said, ‘Yes, I want to do it,’ so she’s coming to play with us in a couple weeks.”
Murphy said that MJ Rodriquez, who plays Blanca on the FX show, and Billy Porter, who stars as Pray Tell, will get to share a lot of scenes with LuPone.
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Not only will season 2 add to the star-studded cast (rising stars such as Angelica Ross already grace the screen and powerhouse Janet Mock had her directorial debut on the show) but the next season will no longer be set in the ‘80s. The season premiere will jump to 1990, on the day that Madonna’s “Vogue” is released.
“We now get sort of reacquainted with these characters because the year-and-a-half has now passed,” co-creator Steven Canals told Variety. “It’s fun to explore what has happened in the past two years, and how are they the person that they are presenting now? We were able to research what was happening in 1990 and lean into how New York had changed.”
Starting off the season with “Vogue” is fitting as the show explores the drag ball culture scene of New York City in the ‘80s and’ 90s, and focuses on the transgender community and the HIV/AIDS crisis, which Canals said the second season will dive even deeper into. “We’re also talking about access to medical care and what does that mean to be positive and be Black or be Latin and not have access? To explore life and death in that way is exciting as a storyteller and also scary because you know the audience has expectations, and they fall in love with these characters,” Canals said.
Some of these stories will be told through the lens of Mock once again, as she will direct another episode in the upcoming season. Porter and Our Lady J will also get that opportunity, according to Deadline. Pose has already broken records for having the highest number of trans actors in series regular roles, and Murphy apparently has even more big moments in store for the show.
“It’s a first in so many ways and broken so many rules,” Murphy said. “It’s extraordinary…it’s getting bigger and bigger.”
Season 2 of Pose will start shooting next week, and it is set to premiere in June.