Gina Torres is opening up about her Hollywood career sharing that as an Afro-Latina woman she often feels as if she is trapped in a box with the roles she has played.
Torres first hit the scene in 1992 in an episode of Unnatural Pursuits and has gone on to play roles in Suits, Hannibal, Riverdale, Gossip Girl, and 9-1-1: Lone Star.
Gina Torres said:
“I feel like I was living in three worlds. There was my world, that I grew up in, also Spanish-speaking. Home, Cuban parents, and then you go out into the world, and I’m speaking English and I’m in the Bronx. And then, going into this industry as an actress, then nobody recognizes you as either one.”
“There was no place for me as a Latina, and then as a Black woman—I didn’t identify as a Black woman, because for me it was cultural.
Because, of course, I present Black, I am a Black woman.
I am also Cuban. When you’re here in the United States and they ask you to be in a box, and you don’t fit into the box…culturally, it was different. It was not one that I identified with. But to work, to survive, it was something that I had to learn.”
“To then learn to be whatever ‘Black’ was, and then feel like I was alienating that other part of myself, that Latina self, it just kind of became a Jedi mind trick, to keep myself from just being sad all the time about not being able to fully experience and express the entirety of myself.”
Torres has spoken about this before!
In an interview with CNN she said:
“I need to speak my language (Spanish) whenever possible. I need to let the audience know that this is also a face of Latinidad.”
“I need to speak my language (Spanish) whenever possible. I need to let the audience know that this is also a face of Latinidad,” Gina Torres told me in a recent interview for this story – She’s done sacrificing one part of her identity over the other https://t.co/cWGLAgIFSK
— Nicole Chavez (@NicoleChavz) June 16, 2021
She goes on to add:
Hire us.
It’s not that hard.
We need to be in front of the camera, behind the camera, we need to be writing the words, we need to be directing these stories.
There’s so much room in the industry.
If we all get together and create a system by which we can nurture each other’s talents, bring people under the umbrella and bring them into the fold.
Then the pool widens so that you have more to choose from and more to pick from.”re us.
It’s not that hard. We need to be in front of the camera, behind the camera, we need to be writing the words, we need to be directing these stories.
There’s so much room in the industry.
If we all get together and create a system by which we can nurture each other’s talents, bring people under the umbrella and bring them into the fold.
Then the pool widens so that you have more to choose from and more to pick from.”
We feel her on this! Hollywood bias is real!
