Rosie Perez on Latino representation in Hollywood: “When we do get our stories told, we have some executive who knows nothing about who we are as a people...they’re like, ‘Can you spice it up a little bit?’ You want to punch these people in the face.”
slides into a booth at an upscale Italian restaurant in Manhattan. She pushes up the sleeves on her wool sweater dress and settles in to talk about the state of Hollywood. And women in Hollywood. And Latinos in Hollywood. Or maybe that lack of cultural specificity in the homogeneous blob of film content that is created to appeal to the widest possible global audience.
And beatings. Perez says she was physically abused by the nuns as well as her mother during what she describes as a “bittersweet” adolescence. “I didn’t understand who he was. And I didn’t care. I threw the card away,” Perez says. “My girlfriend Marian went back and got it. She always joked, ‘You owe your entire career to me.’ You know, I did audition for ‘Do the Right Thing.’ People think that Spike just discovered me and gave me the role. No, he made me work for it.”
“My first scene, Johnny Depp whispered in my ear, ‘Oh, darling, you’re too good for this shit,’” she says, imitating his husky drawl. “Then he invited me to his trailer, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my God, Johnny Depp’s invited me to his trailer.’ He’s on the phone, and he goes, ‘Yeah, yeah, she’s amazing. Her name is Rosie Perez. Hang on. Hey, Rosie — over here. Say hello to my girlfriend, Winona Ryder.’ And I fell over laughing.
“Jennifer and I clicked instantly,” Perez says. “I haven’t seen that woman in ages, but I just think she’s phenomenal. She’s like, ‘I cannot believe how racist this industry is.’ She picks up the phone and calls Jane Berliner at CAA and says, ‘You need to represent this actress.’” Regardless, Weir stood his ground, as did Bridges, whom she calls “simply amazing.” The role of the grieving mother landed her an Oscar nomination. But then nothing really changed. “Nobody saw the movie in America. It lasted only a couple of weeks in the theater. It was considered a flop,” she says.
Television provided a whole new area of exploration, but she suffered a neck injury while doing a one-off episode of “Law & Order: SVU” that kept her from reteaming with Wolfe for the John Guare play “A Free Man of Color.” “It was supposed to star Jeffrey Wright, me and Mos Def. We had workshopped it for a year,” she says. “So I do that TV show, go back to rehearsals, and they tell me, ‘Sorry, for insurance reasons, you can’t continue.’ It was heartbreaking.
While Perez stays mum about facing any discrimination on the show, others have been more than willing to talk about it. At the time, Latino leaders demanded ABC apologize to Perez after anonymous executives made disparaging comments about her in astory that suggested she couldn’t read a teleprompter. Perez never received the apology. But perhaps a comeuppance did finally take place.
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