WestSideStory screenwriter Tony Kushner reveals “there was one scene in particular that there were 32 rewrites on.”
manages to pay homage to the show’s legacy “while giving it a new shine, gently and shrewdly tweaking rather than overhauling.”
The biggest rewrite involved completely reimagining the character of Doc—the white candy shop owner who employs Tony , one half of the show’s central doomed couple. It was Kushner’s husband, author who came up with the idea of replacing Doc: “What you should do,” he told Kushner, “is make the character Doc’s widow, make her Puerto Rican, and askThus we got Valentina, the new proprietor of Doc’s candy store.
who is Afro-Latina, plays Maria’s confidante Anita, and says that discussions about Anita’s race began as early as her audition. “I didn’t think there was an actual chance in any world that I was going to get the job, because Anitas don’t traditionally look like me,” DeBose tells me in a joint interview with Zegler. “I was like, ‘Well, if my being Afro-Latina is not something that we want to explore within the context of this portrayal, then I don’t know that you should hire me.
But all three frequently speak Spanish instead—in scenes where Spielberg intentionally doesn’t use subtitles. That absence is meant to be unifying, not alienating: “We’re a bilingual country, and this feels like a movie for a country that is bilingual,” said Kushner. It’s also a clear attempt to correct for the white-washed dialogue featured in previous iterations of the musical.
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