As detailed in Todrick Hall's Billboard cover story, the wildly versatile actor/singer/choreographer/TV personality has spent years fighting an uphill battle to carve a lane for himself as an entertainer, pushing back against racism and homophobia. As part of Billboard & The Hollywood Reporter's Pride Summit & Pride Prom on Saturday (June 13), Hall and Steven Canals (co-creator and executive producer of FX's Pose) sat down (digitally, of course) to speak about their respective journeys to industry recognition.
Canals says one issue he's had to face is the industry wanting to produce "remakes or duplicates" of primarily white stories but with a more diverse cast. "We have our own stories to tell. Just create space for us to do that," Canals points out.
"And give us the same budget and the same billboards and the same promotion and the same everything that you would have given had it been another show that featured mostly white people," Hall says, in full agreement. "That's another thing I see. Okay, we'll give you this, but it's not going to be at the best time slot and it's not going to have the best promotion until you prove yourself. Even though you're trying to throw us a bone, you're not throwing us a bone, really, because you're setting us up to have to more than prove ourselves to be considered equal when we didn't get the equal amount."