America Ferrera knows first hand how limiting it is to work in an industry that offers so little representation for people of color and women, and she's tired of it.
"As an actor of color, I really, every now and then, would love the freedom to play a character that doesn't have to represent every single Latina out there,” the 32-year-old star told Entertainment Tonight Online Wednesday. "That's not a freedom, as actors of color, we feel the right to take because there is so much pressure on every single role that does represent people of color or women that we put a burden on those roles to say something or to represent us or to stand for us.”
The star's groundbreaking lead role as Betty Suarez, a Mexican-American journalist, in ABC's "Ugly Betty" earned her a Golden Globe in 2007, when she became the first Latina actress to do so. And Ferrera successfully returned to primetime television as the smart and coolheaded big box store floor manager, Amy, in NBC's "Superstore" in January.
But it was her role as a well-meaning Spanish woman with a stereotypically heavy accent, Brigida, in Netflix's original film "Special Correspondents" that prompted ET Online to ask the actress about her thought process when choosing the role.
In response, Ferrera said she approached the role of Brigida as a way to dive deep into "ridiculous stereotypes" and use the character as a tool to comment on them. But she added that while she understands audiences need to see actors of color and women portraying non-stereotypical roles, as an artist she'd like more creative freedom to choose any character she'd like.
“As an audience member, I find myself wanting roles that are female or roles that are women of color to represent a certain thing," Ferrera told ET. "But as an actor, an unequal burden falls upon actors of color to have every role say something and represent something.”
For years, Ferrera has been outspoken on the need for more diversity in the entertainment industry. In May, she wrote a guest op-ed on Deadline.com on the topic and also touched upon the pressure she feels when deciding what roles to take on.
“Diversity is on everyone’s agenda today, but it’s something I’ve had to think about my entire career, because, in a way, it’s like the tax you pay for being a person of color in this industry,” she wrote in her blog. “You don’t get to avoid these questions. It’d be great to go and audition for roles that don’t have to be representative of every Latino person on the planet, but we aren’t always given that freedom. I can’t just play a housekeeper or a drug dealer, no matter how interesting the character might be, because I always have to think about whether I want to play a role that’s perpetuating the same old stereotypes.”
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