Gina Rodriguez’s rocky road to success
‘Jane the Virgin’ star paving the way for other actors of color
“You never really think that you’re going to just pack up your life and go across the country.”
Gina Rodriguez certainly didn’t. The 31-year-old actress is a rising star in CW’s constellation with her Golden Globe-winning turn as the titular Jane on Jane
the Virgin. She has also enjoyed a meteoric rise in film, landing gritty roles in Peter Berg ’s forthcoming disaster drama Deepwater
Horizon and Alex Garland’s sci-fi thriller Annihilation.
She wasn’t always Hollywood, though.
In fact, Rodriguez, who received her training at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, says the concrete jungle had a bit of a hold on her. “I think the decision to move to L.A. for every New York actor is kind of difficult because New York is like the mecca of theater and if you start there, it’s like, ‘This is where you must prevail!’ ”
But after the actress’ role in 2011’s coming-of-age indie, Go
For It!, garnered the attention of a small agency in Los Angeles, she decided to take a leap. With an agent on call and her eldest sister a recent transplant to the area, Rodriguez packed her entire life into her 1999 Toyota Corolla to move to the City of Angels. “IT WAS PROBABLY ONE OF THE SCARIEST TRIPS OF MY LIFE ...” Rodriguez, who traveled with her then-boyfriend, says: “My boyfriend at the time was AfricanAmerican. He was from Texas, so we’d always visit his family and we’d always get stopped because we were an interracial couple or we’d get totally racially profiled, like getting pulled over by cops. We decided not to take the southern route to L.A because we didn’t want to deal with racism, pretty much. So, we took the northern route. In January. And it was icy and terrifying and it took us a really long time because the snow was so bad and we had to stop so often. It took seven days to get across country to an empty apartment with no bed — slept on the floor.”
“But we made it,” she continues. “And I think that was such a metaphor for my life as an actor, because it just wasn’t easy and it still isn’t easy and it gets icy and it gets dangerous and it gets racist but we prevailed. And that’s kind of what the whole experience felt like and always will feel like and always will remind me how strong we were in that somewhat dangerous time.”
Rodriguez channeled that same strength as a leather-tough rapper in 2012’s Filly Brown, which earned acclaim at Sundance and landed her an ABC holding deal. Her career blossomed from there.
Now, the same star who laughingly recalls changing in her car to audition for “Chola #3” is trying to raise the profile of other entertainers of color — starting with her production company, I Can and I Will Productions, and her #MovementMondays trend, a social media campaign that spotlights Latinos in entertainment.
Launched in January in the midst of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, Rodriguez says the campaign has inspired her young fans. “They look up and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, she’s just like me. Oh my God, that actor is from where I grew up.’ ” “AND ALL OF A SUDDEN, THEY HAVE SOMEBODY TO HOLD ON TO ...” “Back when I was watching TV, you know 10, 15, 20 years ago, we weren’t as prevalent on the screen by any stretch of the imagination,” Rodriguez says. “Actors of color are much more present than we were 20 years ago, but what I felt like is that we were nowhere. I couldn’t see us. I couldn’t find us on TV. I couldn’t find us in the movies, and it made me feel like I wasn’t enough. It made me feel like my story wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t human enough. It made me feel like I didn’t deserve to tell these stories.”
But she does and she is.