“Pose’s” Ryan Jamaal Swain’s Bold Next Act
06.06.2023 - 20:45
/ metroweekly.com
Pose, Ryan Jamaal Swain, one of the stars of FX’s Emmy-winning, dearly missed ballroom drama, doesn’t hesitate a moment before responding. “Oh, of course. Season two, episode eight.
Revelations,” he declares. “When I had to go off on people.”Indeed, the memes are here to prove that fans of the show were gagging right along with the characters onscreen in Revelations when Swain’s usually demure dancer Damon explodes during an Evangelista family dinner scene, and doesn’t just start spilling tea but throws it scalding hot in the face of Billy Porter’s Pray Tell. The way Swain as Damon spits out the accusation, “It’s not because y’all fucking?” — it cuts deep.The episode was a breakthrough for the character, and, also apparently, for the actor.
“Honey. Let me tell you something,” Swain starts, teeing up the story as we chat about Pose and what comes after debuting on a groundbreaking hit.“What can I say? More than you know, there were just so many mirroring things that were happening in that moment. And that was the first time where I was like, ‘Oh, I can really do this TV and film thing.
Oh, I got the formula now. Oh, I got it. I got it.’ Because yeah, all of us, the people that I was looking forward to looking up to during that process, we were all figuring it out for the first time.”Figuring it out, yet also, according to Swain, afforded the opportunity by creator-showrunner Steven Canals to have some autonomy over how the characters’ stories were told.