I've been transformed by stories, and I think that storytelling is definitely sacred. I take it very seriously because my life has been changed, whether it was a movie, a play, a piece of writing, poetry, a painting.
Until they hired a Latina to write for Laurel [in How to Get Away with Murder], I was scared that she was going to fall into stereotypes.
I think it's not an easy task because there's not enough Latino writers that are being given opportunities to write things - and I say this because I've been given a lot of bilingual movies in the past because of my career in Mexico, and they're like, "Oh, it's going to make sense for her to do this." A lot of studios want to hit that demographic, but they sort of do it without starting in the right way, which is having someone who knows the culture, and enjoys the language as well, to be able to write these things.
I should have asked for credit - but he has no idea how amazing it is that a character that was written as a boy can be equally written for a girl. It's like you said, just write a character as if it were a man, and then turn it and make it into a woman. It's like, we're human beings, after all.
