“Pose” star Angelica Ross has revealed that she ended a relationship with her ex-fiancé after she refused to keep her transgender identity a secret.
“He was Italian, handsome and it would have maybe worked had I chosen to be stealth, live in his shadow, and protect his image of being a straight male in the world or whatever,” the actress revealed during the virtual ATX TV Festival.
Ross says she tolerated the relationship because she did not believe she could do better. She says it is something many transgender women and men experience.
“Even with the fact that he won’t really take you home to see his family or they honk outside the door and take him to dinner or…threaten your relationship all the time or whatever, this is the best it’s going to get,” she recalled.
After tolerating being hidden away from her partner’s real life, she decided to leave once and for all.
“The audacity that I had to say that I deserve more and to love myself enough to leave that and bet on myself after years of having to figure it out,” she asserted. “I am very pleased with where my life has gone, how I’ve blossomed into the woman I am now. But I wasn’t as secure in myself and my body, in my appearance.”
But the relationship left residual feelings which would spill over into her work.
“I was always terrified of being found out and so in my acting classes in college…I was just so nervous. My teachers didn’t know, no one knew for my safety on campus,” she adds. “I would never get to greatness hiding parts of myself in the sense that as an actor you need to be able to let go into the role and not be worried about what I look like, what I sound like.”
We’re glad she was finally able to live in her truth.
