Everyone has a breaking point. Janet Mock may have hit hers at the premiere party for Pose’s final season on Thursday night.
via: Page Six
During the 15-minute speech, she complained about how much the network is paying her, demanded better treatment for the trans community, shouted “F-ck Hollywood,” revealed that she’d slept with someone in the show’s crew, asked her “Pose” actor boyfriend not to leave her over the infidelity, decried the quality of the writing on the show, and had a brief conversation with co-creator and Hollywood mogul Ryan Murphy from the stage.
Early in her talk, Mock, 38, wondered aloud, “Why am I making $40,000 an episode? Huh?”
“I am angry!,” she said, demanding more money and perks equal to other TV executives.
The room at Jazz at Lincoln Center fell completely silent as Mock shouted: “F–k Hollywood … Does this make you uncomfortable? It should. It should make you f–king shake in your motherf–king boots. This is speaking truth. This is what ‘Pose’ is.”
Mock next complained about the quality of the material from male writers on the show’s first two episodes, then addressed Murphy, saying that “you brought … girls in to help you.”
“Who brought the girls in?,” she asked him. “I did,” Murphy replied, “I wanted the girls to be there.”
But the speech took an even more personal turn when Mock demanded that boyfriend Angel Bismark Curiel “stand up … right now!”
Bismark Curiel nervously stood up, and Mock said to the crowd, “Let me tell you something about love.”
“Today, I was gonna let [Angel] go,” she said. “I was gonna let you go, right, but what did I do? I f–ked someone on the crew, right?”
At that revelation, one of the show’s guest stars could be heard gasping and asked, “What the hell is happening?”
“Angel, Angel. I’m not losing you. You hear me? You are f–king important to me,” Mock continued. “I don’t want to live in a house alone. I want you. You motherf–ker. Right there. That’s who I want. I’m getting what’s mine.”
Mock then apologized to composer Our Lady J — a producer and writer on “Pose” — and said she’d tried to diminish her to “make myself bigger.”
“I f–ked up, y’all. I forgot who the f–k I was. They want me to come up here and pretend,” she said. “I don’t need Hollywood, honey. You know why? Cuz I’m f–king free.”
Mock provided some inspirational words for cast members — including Dominique Jackson, Indya Moore and the show’s lead, MJ Rodriguez — before turning her attention back to the industry at large.
“It’s a show, but it means so much to everyone to ‘ensure that we enable black and brown trans women to make it’ because that sounds good,” she said sarcastically. “It makes you comfortable to talk like that because then I don’t scare you into facing the f–king truth. You all have stomped on us.”
An insider who has worked with Mock told Page Six that she seemed “emotionally unhinged” and suggested her revelation about her relationship may have been the cause.
“She seemed almost immediately remorseful at what she aired publicly,” they said.
A visibly shaken Mock admitted that she was afraid the forthright speech might have ruined her career, though some in the room had her back, such as Jackson, who shouted from the audience, “Thank you for speaking for me!”
Mock was scheduled to promote the show on “Good Morning America” on Friday, but insiders told us the appearance was canceled after she gave her speech.
Mock did not get back to us and her reps did not comment.
Whatever she is currently experiencing personally, she and the cast and crew of Pose are forever deserving of respect for their indelible impact.
