Pose’s breakout star, Ryan Jamaal Swain, always knew he wanted to be a performer. The showbiz bug bit him at 4 years old after he’d finished a tap routine and he relished in the applause so much that he couldn’t bring himself to exit the stage.
Thus began his serious pursuit of the arts.As a child in Birmingham, Ala., Swain studied ballet, jazz, and modern hip-hop dance.
He performed with several dance companies before turning to acting at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. He went on to earn a BFA at Howard University and study at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford, England.His hard work and late nights at rehearsals paid off in 2017 when Swain, then 23, landed the role of Damon Richards in Ryan Murphy’s FX series Pose.