Latina girls everywhere will finally get a real-life Latina Disney princess when the seventh season of “Once Upon a Time” premieres this fall.
The ABC series’ executive producers revealed during Disney’s D23 Expo on Saturday that Dania Ramirez (“Devious Maids”) will portray a new iteration of Cinderella on the show, according to Entertainment Weekly.
The upcoming season of “OUAT” will serve as a sort-of reboot for the show, which said goodbye to many of its major storylines and characters during its season six finale. Ramirez was announced as one of the new series regulars on July 6 but her role was kept under wraps until now.
“Dania Ramirez will be playing a different version of Cinderella,” executive producer Edward Kitsis said over the weekend. “If we remember Henry’s grandfather is Prince Charming [Josh Dallas], so we have the grandson of Prince Charming with a new Cinderella.”
The Dominican-born actress’s character is a separate iteration of the role actress Jessy Schram played earlier in the series. Kitsis told EW that as Henry ventures into new books and stories, fans can expect to see different versions of characters they’ve already seen.
Ramirez’s Cinderella will play the wife of an adult Henry Mill (Andrew J. West) and the mother of his long-lost daughter, Lucy (Alison Fernandez). In May, Kitsis hinted that Henry and Lucy’s mother will have a major storyline in the series much like Prince Charming and Snow White did.
″[Lucy’s] mother and Henry will be a very epic love story in the tradition of ‘Once Upon a Time,’ just like his grandparents,” Kitsis told The Hollywood Reporter. “We can’t forget, he’s the grandchild of Prince Charming, which technically makes him Prince Charming Jr.”
Disney tried to position the young animated princess Elena of Avalor as its first Latina princess in 2015, but Ramirez’s Cinderella is the first time the company gives fans an adult live-action version of a Latina princess.
The magic may only exist on television, for now, but Ramirez knows the importance of the role.
“This one is for all of us! #Latina #DominicanAmerican,” she wrote in an Instagram caption on Monday. “I’m living a real life fairytale.”
So are we, Dania. So are we.
