Michaela Jaé Rodriguez honoured with first Voice of Visibility Award at AIDS Walk Los Angeles
The Pose star received APLA Health's new Voice of Visibility Award at the 42nd AIDS Walk Los Angeles, recognising her work on HIV awareness, stigma and trans advocacy.
Pose star Michaela Jaé Rodriguez has become the first person to receive APLA Health's Voice of Visibility Award, which was presented to her at the 42nd annual AIDS Walk Los Angeles on Sunday 18 October. The new honour recognises her work to raise awareness of HIV, reduce the stigma that still surrounds it and speak up for transgender people.
The award was handed over during the opening ceremony at West Hollywood Park, where comedian and actor Joel Kim Booster, her co-star in the Apple TV+ comedy Loot, was on hand to present it. Singer David Archuleta performed for the crowd, and thousands of people then set off on the two-mile walk through West Hollywood's Rainbow District.
This year's event ran under the theme "Defend Care, Demand Action", which focuses on the gap between the HIV testing, prevention and treatment now available and the people who are actually able to get it. When APLA Health announced the award earlier this month, Rodriguez summed up that idea in her own words: "There is still a cruel distance between what medicine can do and who actually gets to benefit from it."
Craig E. Thompson, chief executive of APLA Health, explained why the organisation chose her as its first recipient. "Voices like hers keep HIV and equity in the public conversation at a time when it would be easy to look away," he said. APLA Health, which began life as AIDS Project Los Angeles, organises the walk each year to raise money for HIV prevention, treatment and care services across Los Angeles County, and the event has been running since 1985.
For Rodriguez, the award sits alongside a string of firsts that came from her role as Blanca in Pose. The FX drama, set in New York's ballroom scene in the late 1980s and 1990s, put the AIDS crisis at the centre of its story, and Blanca lives with HIV throughout the series.
The part made Rodriguez the first trans woman to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy in a lead acting category, and in 2022 she became the first openly transgender actress to win a Golden Globe, taking Best Actress in a Television Drama Series. She has continued to use that platform for HIV awareness and trans visibility ever since, which is exactly the work this new award was created to recognise.
As the first holder of the Voice of Visibility Award, Rodriguez has set the tone for those who follow her, and donations to this year's walk are still being accepted through the AIDS Walk Los Angeles website.
