I would get very frustrated reading scripts that were bilingual but maybe not bicultural.
[Everybody Loves Somebody] one really loves both cultures, represents them in a very accurate, genuine, authentic, fun, fresh way, and it includes so many more people because it has that language aspect to it.
I hope that we start trendsetting [with Everybody Loves Somebody], you know, like having bigger movies also include that. Because I think it'll definitely change a lot of what's going on right now.
People follow my movies for a reason, and that's because I believe in them, and I don't want to just make movies for the sake of making movies.
Romantic comedies, if done badly, can be catastrophic.
I knew that [director/screenwriter] Catalina Aguilar Mastretta had an amazing take on the female psyche and the modern woman and the modern immigrant woman living in the U.S., and I really saw the need for a story told of our daily lives without being a statistic and without just trying to hit a demographic, and I felt that with this one.
I tell [scriptwriters] I think [their scripts] has too many stereotypes, that even the way they come in and out of Spanish doesn't really make sense, it feels forced.
I explain that as Latinos, we can also be professionals.
I think that, for sure, we as women should try and realize that it's more about having someone to share.
I also really pay attention to whether the script embodies a full female character or if they're just wanting a two-dimensional objectified woman. So I also have that aspect to take care of as well.
["When are you getting married" in Everybody Loves Somebody] is funny because it's put on by women and men. Society makes women feel like, oh, you're getting old.
In the movie [Everybody Loves Somebody], the sister tells my character, "No, don't you want to be with someone?" I think the family - especially in this movie - they know that the reason that Clara doesn't want to have an emotional, intimate relationship is more because she was hurt so badly from heartbreak that she's then being closed off and cynical.
There's a lot of lies out there that we should catch and that have taken me a lot of time to sort of see, and reading up on it and getting educated on it. I'm reading a book that's about how images of beauty have hurt women along the decades. It's a very educating but infuriating thing to see, how we don't have equal opportunity because they're demanding so much more.
All the products that are sold to us - those anti-aging products - are telling us that there's a due date.
Wisdom and white hair might not be as valued [in our society] as in different cultures.
[Everybody Loves Somebody] was a different take on that immigrant sort of life.
[Rhimes and Pete Nowalk] have definitely, from the pilot [of How to Get Away with Murder], brought forth a woman who is unapologetically herself, unapologetically flawed, and is as vulnerable as she is powerful. I'm grateful to be in that family.
There's not enough of those inclusive projects where I feel like I'm interpreting a human being and not just a statistic or a nationality.
[Producers] promised me they wouldn't do that sort of "defining nature of my character is that Laurel is Latina [in How to Get Away with Murder] ." It has nothing to do with that. She just happens to be a Latina.
There's a lot of things, even the landscape that we show in the movie [Everybody Loves Somebody] of Ensenada in Baja is just spectacular. There's so much more - I wish we could have shown more, but I'm glad we didn't see the typical, you know, border-sombrero-tequila thing that we normally do.
I think, especially with this show [How to Get Away with Murder], we have Viola Davis and Pete Nowalk as the showrunner.
