This was published 9 years ago
Jane the Virgin star Gina Rogriguez declined stereotype lead role in Devious Maids
It isn't every aspiring actress in Hollywood who turns down a lead role in a TV series. And yet that is exactly what Gina Rodriguez did.
The 30-year-old Chicago-born actress was offered a lead role in Devious Maids, the comedy/drama from Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry, about four Latina housemaids working in Beverly Hills. And she said no.
You're kidding me: Gina Rodriguez is mistakenly artificially inseminated in Jane the Virgin.
At the heart of the issue for Rodriguez was the fact that the series played too heavily into a Latina stereotype – working-class background, employed as a housemaid for the rich – and she felt, as an American daughter to a Puerto Rican family, that there were other, better stories.
"I feel like there's a perception that people have about Latinos in America, we are perceived a very certain way," she says. "Being a maid is fantastic, I have many family members that have fed many of their families doing that job, but there are other stories that need to be told. And I think that the media is a venue and an avenue to educate and teach our next generation."
Although it might seem, at first glance, somewhat astonishing that an aspiring Hollywood actress would turn down a TV series lead role for an ideal, Rodriguez declares she did not "become an artist to be a millionaire". Nor did she become an actress to wear Louis Vuitton, she adds. "I became an actor to change the way I grew up," she declares.
"Every role that I've chosen has been one that I think is going to push forward the idea of my culture, of women, of beauty, my idea of liberating young girls, of feeling that they have to look at a specific beauty type," she says.
"And I wasn't going to let my introduction to the world be one of a story that I think has been told many times. I wanted it to be a story that was going to liberate young girls and say, we're there too, we're the doctors, the teachers, the writer, the lawyers, and I can do that too. And I don't have to be a perfect size zero. I can be a perfect size me. And that's what I live."
And what an introduction it is. Rodriguez is starring in a new series, Jane the Virgin. The series, loosely based on the Venezuelan telenovela Juana la Virgen created by Perla Farias, is the story of a young woman, Jane Villanueva, whose vow to keep her virginity is ruined when she is mistakenly artificially inseminated during what should have been a routine medical check-up.
Complicating things – as only a television drama based on a Venezuelan telenovela could – is the fact that the father of the child, Rafael Solano (Justin Baldoni), is also her new employer, on whom she once had a teenage crush.
The series also stars Andrea Navedo as Jane's mother Xiomara, Yael Grobglas as Rafael's scheming wife Petra Solano, Ivonne Coll as Jane's grandmother Alba, Brett Dier as Jane's fiancee Michael and Jaime Camil as Jane's father Rogelio de la Vega, a famous telenovela star with whom her mother once had an affair.
"Jane is strong and independent, and she's striving to make her dreams come true, and she's working so hard to have a better life than her parent, and not saying her parents had a bad life, [but] Jane is like grasping that with both hands, and she's trying so hard," says Rodriguez.
"The mix-ups that happen in her life and the mishap that happens in her life, I think is just a beautiful example of what we face in real life," she adds. "You know, we face things all the time, whether they be positive or negative. It's going to be really exciting to go on this journey with this girl that has a very serious thing happen to her and see the way she chooses."
The series is, to some extent, a beautiful exploration of the Westernised immigrant childhood of Rafael Solano – scenes in which Jane and her grandmother speak, the former in English and the latter in Spanish, will be particularly reminiscent for a generation who grew up on those interactions – and also a love letter to the telenovela, Latin America's gorgeously over-the-top cousin to the soap opera.
It even has a narrator, voiced by Anthony Mendez, who speaks with the quixotic verbal dexterity of a Latin lover.
"I have a very specific tone that I'm trying to hit that there's sort of a fairy-tale, whimsical quality to it," explains the show's producer, Jennie Snyder Urman. "At the same time, this is a telenovela, and I want to take advantage of all the fun and sort of license that comes with being able to adapt a telenovela and all the tropes that come with that, [like] an evil twin."
"I want to do all those big things, and I'm hoping that if I just keep the characters really grounded and relatable, and they react as one would when really bizarre things happen, we'll find the comedy in that. It's a tricky tone, it's one I'm excited about tackling and we'll do our best. I'm sure we will read a lot of feedback."
Most of it, you could predict, will be good. When the series was screened to programmers in Los Angeles in May it was the standout of the new season, noted for its good humour, gentle manner and engaging performances. And some ridiculous moments which gave the delicious script an icing of brilliance.
Urman says that throughout the writing process she was conscious of not letting the series slip into parody. "I didn't want to do a straight exact adaptation because that show has already been done. I didn't want to do a satire because that wasn't what I aimed to," she says.
"I always kept reminding myself, you're writing a love letter to the telenovela, an ode to the telenovela. That's the spirit in which I tried to approach this. So there is a little bit of that meta stuff going on, and it's going to keep going on, and hopefully you will start to realise the way in which the narrator connects to the narrative and all of that kind of stuff."
Jane the Virgin, Fox8 Monday, 7.30pm