Indya Moore should be your obsession. They’re a brilliant actor, advocate, and a genius on social media – where they make big ideas digestible with mega wit. Their role as Angel Evangelista in the revolutionary FX series Pose – which made TV history for hiring trans people to actually play trans roles – was how the world got to know them; Angel’s is a story of glorious survival.
Before Pose, Moore – who was born in New York – had worked as a model (they’re currently repped by mega-agency IMG), and starred in the musical movie Saturday Church, about a group of young queer people saved by dancing. Their work has one simple driver: “My vision of the future I want to see.”
“I know that a large part of social convention is my social exclusion,” they say. “I know that when I trespass convention by being included and taking space that isn't offered I am challenging a system that works against me to work for me and people like me.” They have also been welcomed into fashion, thanks to a friendship with Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquière.
Moore is part of a new generation of actors who have a voice outside of the roles they get, one, in Moore’s case, which fights for the lives of people of colour and trans people, speaking up and out about politics and injustices. “(I am most proud of) my survival, bravery, and identity as a black trans person,” they say. “My ability to create empathetic connections between audience and narrative. Being included in such a life and perspective shifting program like Pose. It's changed so many people’s lives, including my own.”
Tom Rasmussen