Throughout my life, my mom, my dad, my grandmother - these were people who made sure that I had the right people around me uplifting me.

'Pose' itself is about family. It's about all kinds of families and how they bring themselves together and how they uplift each other and how they fight even harder to move forward.

The ball scene was never really only gay people. I think people have this notion that if there's a man hanging around a gay man, he must be gay, but that's just stigma. Back in the day, it was the same; there were lots of different people there: gay, straight, whatever. They did not care what they were called because they knew who they were.

A lot of people have forgotten the severity of this disease, of HIV. So I think it's important that we just talk about things like this: how we can prevent it, how we can make sure that people are safe, how they can move forward, too, if they do have HIV.

'Rent' was one of the main defining moments, and it was like the precipice of my transition.