Li'l Papi (Angel Bismark Curiel) was living on the streets, surving through drug sales and hustling (he preferred women, but accepted male clients). After stumbling upon the ballroom subculture, he was entranced, and petitioned Blanca of House Evangelista to "adopt" him, even though he wasn't gay or trans. She agreed, with the rule that he stop dealing, and pose occasionally as a muscleman.
In Season 2, Li'l Papi starts dating Angel (Indya Moore), a sex worker whose previous plot arc involved an affair with a married man (Evan Peters). After various arguments and breakup-reconciliations, they get married. He opens a talent agency specializing in LGBTQ models, with Angel as his top client. They have a happy ending (sort of), a welcome relief in a show that too often emphasized people being rejected by family, murdered, or dying of AIDS.
This was Angel's first exposure to trans people. In an interview with Attitude, he notes that he grew up in a "very cis, very heteronormative, very rough" Afro-Dominican community in Little Liberty, Miami. He was bullied for being short and artistic, and for having asthma, and escaped into the world of the theater. At the Miami Arts Charter School, he performed in The Rose Tattoo, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Jesus Hopping the A Train followed, and upon graduating in 2013, he enrolled at Pace University in New York as a drama major.
He dropped out in 2015 due to inancial problems, was homeless for awhile, survived anyway he could (he doesn't specify, but I imagine that hustling was one of his survival jobs), and finally found a job in a hotel. But he still auditioned, and in 2016 landed his first on-screen role in America Adrift. He played a middle-class teenager on Long Island who drifts into heroin addiction and drug dealing.
And loses his clothes.
Davi Santos, who is gay in real life, played his older brother, giving Angel his first close contact with LGBTQ people.
Next came the short Louie's Brother Peter (2017). Peter (Andrew McLarty) has Asperger's Syndrome, but that doesn't stop him from helping his brother with the drug deliveries. Angel plays Zeke, one of their customers.
Andew McLarty is gay in real life. .
Night Comes On (2018) is a "slow, painful, grim" indie drama about an African-American, lesbian girl nameed Angel, who is released from juvenile detention at age 18 with no money and no place to stay. She gets a girlfriend, tries to find social connections, and seeks out her father to punish him murdering her mother. Dad is played by John Earl Jelks, who often plays gay characters
You're pushing up the LGBTQ representation, Angel buddy
Our Angel played a store clerk.
Monsters and Men (2018) is not about James Whale and the Frankenstein movie - that's Gods and Monsters. It's about an incident where six police officers corner a black man and "accidentally" kill him during an arrest.
You're pushing up the Black/Latinx representation, too.
When Angel saw the casting call for L'il Pappi, he thought, "That's me! Those are my experiences!" He got the part, and since he had so little exposure to trans people, tried to educate himself, hang out with them, ask about their lives -- and he ended up in a relationship with producer/writer Janet Mock, an African-American transwoman -- while she was still married to her husband. She is the one who suggested expanding Papi's role by giving him a romance with Angel Evangelista.
Pose turned out to be the high point of Angel's acting career. He was starring in a popular tv series, but more importantly, he had found a community.
More after the break