The gospel of Elektra Abundance

Transgender actress Dominique Jackson of “Pose” was always a believer.

“My grandmother’s proud of me, my family’s proud because here I am, I’m closer to God now.” In a 2015 interview, she thinks back on the Anglican altar boy in Trinidad, and being raped by the priest. I’m catching up with Dominique Jackson, the star of FX’s Pose, struck by how the imperious Elektra Abundance is, in reality, a spiritual seeker.

She started out life in hell.

“We live in this realm,” she sighs, “where things exist but we pretend they don’t exist, so that makes them, you know, nonexistent.”

It led to a long investigation into what ‘exists’ . . . finding God, and herself.

As in the Protestant Reformation, she had to figure out what a priest meant to her. Did he handle “God” for you?

That remained true for her family and community, even after they learned of the abuse, so she was left without a spiritual narrative, except dying. “I felt that it would be better for me to save my family’s name by dying than to come forward as myself or live as myself and bring them shame and disrespect.”

She laughs. “And then I woke the hell up.”