Angelica Ross is an actor, a musician, a computer programmer, and so much more. Best known for her role as Candy Ferocity on "Pose," she made her debut in the 2005 film "Natale a Miami." It wasn't until 2016 that she began to break out in the acting world thanks to her starring role on "Her Story," an Emmy-nominated web series about trans women based in Los Angeles. "When I first transitioned I thought I would have to give up my dream being an actor and musician and just focus on surviving," she said to NBC News of the nomination's significance in 2016. "With every award a cis male actor accepts for portraying trans experiences, audiences are reinforced with the notion that it's all a show and when the makeup comes off, a trans woman is still a man. This false concept, and false act of solidarity violently rejects our identities on a platform that has the capacity to heal our society, and inspire us to be better human beings when we walk away from the theater."
In 2018, she joined the cast of "Pose." She went on to star in the "American Horror Story: 1984" anthology series and returned as The Chemist for the show's tenth season. Most recently, she portrayed Georgia in the 2022 Sundance award-winning short film "Framing Agnes."
But Ross's talents extend far beyond acting. She taught herself coding, graphic design, and photography, and she worked in web design before going on to launch TransTech Social Enterprises, an incubator that focuses on fighting workplace discrimination and helping trans and gender-nonconforming people find economic empowerment and gain valuable skills. In the end, TransTech is all about personal empowerment. "When you don't value yourself, you allow others to devalue you," Ross told CNET in 2022 of the organization's ultimate mission and her hopes for the people who utilize it. "You can increase your skills and you can be valuable with whatever abilities you have. Focus on that and not comparing yourself to someone else, and you'll see how fast things start to change."
Despite all her work for social change, Ross doesn't see herself as an activist. Instead, she sees herself as doing "something that we all should be doing as human beings as part of the social contract," she told Elle in 2021.
At the age of 41, she's still just getting started. She broke into the music world in 2021 with her song "Fierce," featuring Ultra Naté and Mila Jam, and she recently released a single titled "Only You" along with an accompanying music video, which she executive produced. She's currently on the lookout for substantial trans-led and trans-created projects in Hollywood, with an eye to executive produce her own content. But Ross isn't looking for hollow, virtue-signaling efforts. "I am very hopeful that people like Janet Mock, myself, Laverne Cox, Rain Valdez, and other folks who are executive producing content will fill that gap, that we will not wait for another white man to be able to extend his privilege," she told Them in 2021 of her hopes for the industry, expressing hope that "we will have built upon the experiences that we had and take our place in leading these narratives."
