“Jane the Virgin” star Gina Rodriguez says that she’s finally had her defining moment as an actress in an interview with People magazine’s CHICA.
Rodriguez recently partnered with AT&T and did a commercial for the company completely in Spanish.
“It was like my Selena moment where I was extremely happy,” Rodriguez told People, likely referencing a scene in the Texas-born singer’s 1997 biopic in which Selena successfully introduces herself to Spanish-language media in Mexico. “I was learning how to confidently speak Spanish as an actor.”
In 2015, the 32-year-old actress told HuffPost she doesn’t always feel comfortable speaking in Spanish to reporters.
“During interviews I get nervous, so I don’t always say it very well,” Rodriguez said. “And I, grammatically, don’t write Spanish very well but I understand everything.”
In a conversation with HuffPost Live, Rodriguez also said her parents intentionally raised her and her siblings primarily speaking English in order to “assimilate us into a culture that wouldn’t, right away, put up their guard against us because of our accent.”
The actress admitted that filming the AT&T commercial was a challenge, but said she was thrilled to have been a part of it.
“I speak Spanish with my family all the time, for sure,” she told CHICA. “Spanish is definitely my second language, growing up in Chicago, having this dual identity, I think many Latinos can understand balancing both but for me I was really excited for this opportunity to grace the screen of this community and have my grandma see it.”
Making abuela proud, Gina.
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