Moreno flips on ‘Heights’
Now sorry she backed Miranda
Aday after pushing back against colorism criticism of the movie “In The Heights,” actress Rita Moreno on Wednesday apologized and said praising Lin-Manuel Miranda for the movie should not have come at the expense of Black lives.
“I’m incredibly disappointed with myself,” she said in a statement on Twitter. “While making a statement in defense of Lin-Manuel Miranda on the Colbert Show last night, I was clearly dismissive of Black lives that matter in our Latin community. It is so easy to forget how celebration for some is lament for others.”
Miranda produced the 2021 documentary “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.”
On Tuesday, the 89-year-old star became the latest high-profile Latina artist to weigh in on the colorism controversy swirling around the movie depicting life in the primarily Dominican neighborhood in upper Manhattan when she leapt to Miranda’s defense on “Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”
“Can we talk for a second about that criticism about Lin-Manuel? That really upsets me,” Moreno said during Colbert’s second post-pandemic show before a live studio audience.
Colbert filled the audience in, explaining the lack of Afro-Latino people as leading cast members in the film, and the subsequent controversy.
Moreno went on.
“You can never do right, it seems,” she said Tuesday. “This is the man who literally has brought Latino-ness and Puerto Rican-ness to America. I couldn’t do it. I would love to say I did, but I couldn’t. Lin-Manuel has done that really singlehandedly, and I’m thrilled to pieces, and I’m proud that he produced my documentary.”
“I’m simply saying, ‘Can’t you just wait a while and leave it alone?’ ” Moreno said. “There’s a lot of people who are ‘puertorriqueños,’ who are also from Guatemala, who are dark and who are also fair. We are all colors in Puerto Rico. It would be so nice if they hadn’t come up with that and just left it alone, just for now. I mean, they’re really attacking the wrong person.”
The movie, adapted from the Tony-winning stage musical, follows three days in the life of a neighborhood and its residents. There are the unfolding love stories of bodega owner Usnavi (played by Anthony Ramos) and aspiring fashion designer Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), and between Benny (Corey Hawkins), who is Black but not Latino, and Nina (Leslie Grace), who has gone off to Stanford but has dropped out and fears telling her family and community. The musical touches on racism, gentrification and the challenges immigrants face.
The issue of colorism arose when journalist Felice León of The Root interviewed director Jon M. Chu, Barrera and Grace, asking for their thoughts on the lack of color diversity among leading roles.
“In the end, when we were looking at the cast, we tried to get people who were best for those roles,” Chu told León. “But I hear you on trying to fill those cast members with darker skin. I hope that encourages more people to tell more stories, and get out there and do it right then ... We tried our best on all fronts of it.”
“In the audition process, which was a long audition process, there were a lot of Afro-Latinos there,” Barrera said. “A lot of darker-skinned people. They were looking for just the right people for the roles, for the person that embodied each character in the fullest extent.”
Miranda himself felt compelled to issue an apology, which he did on Twitter Monday.
“I started writing ‘In The Heights’ because I didn’t feel seen,” said the actor-composer-director on Twitter. “And over the past 20 years all I wanted was for us – ALL of us – to feel seen.”
He said that those aspirations “fell short” in casting lighter-skinned people to play the leading roles, with story arcs and complex characters, with dark-skinned Latinos relegated to the background dancers .