Calling in from a light-filled Harlem apartment, Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe–nominated actor, musician, photographer, and self-described “New School” artist Jeremy Pope is in a reflective season. Going from the hit Netflix series Hollywood—a performance that earned him an Emmy nomination for “Best Actor in a Limited Series”—to starring on Broadway as legendary artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (opposite Paul Bettany as Andy Warhol) in The Collaboration, Pope kicked off an exciting decade with a stride. Yet, his latest genre-bending collaboration with fellow multi-hyphenate Ryan Murphy, The Beauty, is his most striking and timely project yet—serving as a conversation on the cultural landscape of beauty.

Equal parts provocateur and philosopher, Pope grapples with what it means to be human in this era: to hold influence and shape a social dialogue that allows people to feel seen—interrogating the world as we know it while building a new one from the ground up. Moving effortlessly from the Broadway grind to screen acting and producing, Jeremy weighs in on everything from the power of faith and silence to social media algorithms and the currency of beauty as his most transformative year yet awaits him.

STELLA PETERS: I want to talk about what’s important to you. Right now. What shall we talk about today, Jeremy?

JEREMY POPE: In this moment, I’m really excited about people receiving The Beauty with so much love and open-mindedness. I’ve worked with Ryan [Murphy] a couple of times now, and each time has marked a different season of my life. When I think about Hollywood, my first TV show, I was in a different place. I was just leaving Broadway and was making a transition into a different medium. I was moving to LA, and so now I’m circling back in a way, living in Harlem, New York, where I moved when I was 17. Now, Ryan and I have this show coming out, asking the audience a pretty wild question: What would you do or sacrifice for beauty? We’re making space for the last character, which is the audience. It’s made me reflect on my personal journey as an artist. I’m just riffing, but that’s where I’m at. I’m being reflective.

SP: Is there something you’re trying to explore across all of your different art forms?

JP: The constant is the active question. As creatures of this wild, wild world, it’s important to stay curious. When you know better, you do better—for the world, for yourself. You can be of service. Initially, you come into this business to survive, to pay rent. And then the privilege comes to choose specific projects that align with where I’m at right now. I’m very moved by projects that have this active question of trying to understand ourselves. With Hollywood, it was a fantastical exploration, reimagining the industry. That’s the brilliance of Ryan Murphy; he can do outlandish and campy things but creates a wide spectrum for us to land in the middle of. The Beauty’s slogan, “One shot makes you hot,” feels like a crazy line. My feed, my algorithm, expresses this need to alter and change, nip, tuck, alter, edit, or filter this and that.

Now, the active question asks, ‘What relationship do we all individually have with that algorithm and the ideas of beauty and perfectionism that it projects on you?’ We’re not telling the world what to think or what their relationship to beauty should be, but instead asking, ‘How far are you willing to go in the name of beauty?’ Our show asks this question in the way of vanity, but also in the way of people with deficiencies, health deficiencies, and kids who aren’t able to live full-body experiences. What would you do as a parent if you knew that you could give your kid a drug to live a more fruitful life? In conversations like this, we realize that we’re more connected than we sometimes act.

SP: When you did Hollywood, you were an actor. Now, as a producer for The Beauty, how has your offering changed?

JP: As an artist, you are a vessel. Stories are told through you. It’s important for me to understand that my gift as an artist is to be a shapeshifter and sometimes hold up a mirror to different iterations of people or humanity or experiences. This allows people to either see themselves through it. I’m actually grateful for the internet because we now have a space where you can access artistry and creativity instantaneously, without the old school gatekeepers. I’ve been able to tell unconventional stories about marginalized experiences, often from a Black, queer perspective, and I know that has provided a lot of healing to different communities. The whole point of being an artist is trusting your instincts and creating, knowing that the goal is to make something that will truly outlive our time on this earth.

SP: What’s your next frontier?

JP: In the lull, or the downtime after a big project, I’m prone to reflecting on what I’ve learned. I usually end up doing something for myself, like music or photography. And every so often you look at your work years after you’ve made it, and you have a different relationship to it. I’m reminding myself that I am an unconventional artist, and it’s okay to go back and revisit passion projects. What does it mean not to be defined by one kind of expression? It’s important to stay curious as an artist, to learn and be influenced and impacted by the world, and allow the art to be your activism and your protest, or allow it to be soothing. Allow it to be healing, starting with yourself. And it’s nice to have things that the world doesn’t know about; there’s an intimate nature with those private things. The things that aren’t for commerce yet.

SP: When your artistic practices become commercially successful, how do you maintain their deeply personal, therapeutic nature?

JP: It’s definitely a dance. Being an artist is my livelihood. It’s survival. I only know this life as an artist. I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to provide for myself and my family and have a beautiful career. The business that I’m in is about people having an opinion about the art that I choose to make. There’s so much being said around me about The Beauty right now. There’s a lot of trial and error with setting boundaries. Seek the people who are already in your circle, people who’ve already been championing you and your artistry. I know it can sound crass, but I mean this in love: fuck with the people who fuck with you, who get you, who understand you, who see you for all the things you aspire to be. I’ve been able to work with so many incredible creatives who saw something in me. Because they saw it, I believed it. And then all of these beautiful pieces of art and expressions came along.

SP: Tell me about your rituals.

JP: Silence is really important to me. I live in one of the noisiest cities in the world, New York City. It’s a bit of a ritual to sit in silence, noticing the fears start to surface. Some of what comes up is real; it’s tethered to security and insecurity and to livelihood, in an industry that relies on relevance. That’s where faith comes in. I’ve had to negotiate with faith just over the years. In the silence, it becomes a little easier for me to surrender.

SP: Tell me about an unforgettable moment from your travels filming for The Beauty.

JP: I was at a dinner with Ryan in Venice, and we just looked each other in the eye and said, “Let’s not forget this moment.” We were so aware of how fortunate we were, staying at The Gritti Palace, both of us having fought battles to be there. Here we are at dinner, being able to take each other in and look at what we’re able to do. We were presented with it. It felt like a homecoming, working with my boy Anthony Ramos from Musical Theater College and working with Bella [Hadid], taking a glassblowing class on our day off. It was really special. We all come from different walks of life and have been up against different odds, but we were all there, making this. I don’t ever want to take that for granted: working with people who remind you of your brilliance and allow you to soar.

This cover story appears in the pages of VMAN 56: hitting global newsstands starting March 16, 2026!

Photography Luigi & Iango

Fashion Jake Sammis

Creative Director / Editor-in-Chief Stephen Gan

Digital Editor Mathias Rosenzweig

Interview Stella Peters

Grooming Jai Williams

Casting Greg Krelenstein (GK-LD)

Editor Kev Ponce

Fashion Market Editor Copelyn Bengel

Photo Assistant Francisco Betancourt

Styling Assistant Piper Smith

Grooming Assistant Jennifer Green

Cinematographer Santiago Montes