John Leguizamo has heard it all trying to make it as a Latino actor in Hollywood: "too Latino," "not Latino enough," "Latinos don't watch other Latinos." Step inside one of his auditions and hear the craziness for yourself. Then actor and activist, Diane Guerrero, talks about the need for more representation in Hollywood, the struggles she faced being separated from her immigrant parents at 14, and the way she proves her role in "Encanto" to children. And multi-hyphenate, Princess Nokia, discusses how she came up with her stage name, how John Leguizamo and Martin Lawrence are her biggest inspirations, and why she decided to allow herself to be publicly vulnerable with her new EP "i love you but this is goodbye."
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Yeah, yo, I'm so excited to host this week and dig you doctor. And as I always say, it's such an honor to be a voice for Latinos on TV and film. But as I also always say, I wish the honor wasn't so rare.
Hollywood's still struggling with representation on screen. According to a twenty twenty study by the USC Edinburgh Inclusion Initiative, Latino performers appearing in only five percent of speaking roles in twenty nineteen's top one hundred movies, despite being eighteen percent of the total US population.
I mean, yeah, I mean it's crazy. Latinos are almost twenty percent of the country, but we're barely represented in film and television, especially since every movie last year took place in the multiverse. Come on, you're telling me there ain't one dimension that's in the heights. Come on. And then when there is a good Latino role, it's going to people like James Franco. Well, guess what if white people can take our roles, I'm gonna take theirs. That's right. When they do the TV series based on Gwyneth Paltrow's ski accident, trial. I'm gonna be Gwyneth Paltrow. He hit me. He hit me so hard he knocked the egg right out of my vagina. Try not to visualize that. Please. The truth is, I myself have faced this type of discrimination. I mean, I can't tell you how many times in my career I've been told that auditions, that I sound too Latino, not Latino enough, that Latinos don't want to watch other Latinos, all sorts of madness, And sometimes I wish I could put all those casting directors and executives into one room and bring you guys in with me, just to hear the kind of shit that I've been told. Luckily, it turns out the Daily Show has the technology to do just that.
And you're gonna be all right, I promise you.
And scene, Wow, that was quite spectacular.
Drunk.
Thank you so much, Thank you, thank you.
I appreciate it.
I'm impressed. You're very articulate. Oh yeah, and no accent, full sentences. Huh, John, I almost forgot you're not white.
Oh yeah, me too, me too?
And can you imagine if you were white?
Superstar Alert, you'd be one of the big white guys like Tom Cruise Tom Hanks, Tom Hardy Spitball. Have you thought of changing your name to Tom Tom Mazama?
Oh yeah? Or how about a Tom leg with Tom would do a double Tom thing?
You know, I don't even I like that.
Hey, Tom, Tom master something. If you do a little more Latin, yes, yes, yes, but but also also less Latin. So wait a minute, more or less Latin?
Exactly?
Just do what you did in the George Lopez show.
I'm not I'm not in the George Leape show, or I try I might be thinking of George Lopez.
It's still understand what you mean by do.
It less Latin. Well, John, Latin people don't want to see Latin people. They want to see white.
People, white people named Tom.
Well, you know how there's Hot Soza and Miles Souza. Will people want to catch him?
Well, speaking of anybody you want to hit? Oh hell yeah, chuck me.
Got you?
That's spicy? What's in the tomato?
All right?
The top?
And this time, John, can you do us a version that's a little more you know street Are.
They playing a doctor a Latin doctor?
Yeah, but who's not Latin?
Oh but hold this pinata just in case.
Oh you're welcome.
Hey, what the hell's wrong with you? Guys? Douns On?
Hey, hey wait wait.
Endejo was local. My guest tonight is an activist, author, an actor. You may know from Oranges and New Black, Doom, Patrol and Encanto. Please welcome, Diane getredro please all right, calm down, calm down, relax, you'll relax.
Hi.
They're excited, they're excitable. Hey, Diane, do people believe you when you tell them that you do the voice for Incanto? Because when I tell kids, nobody believes me.
I have to sing the entire song.
The whole song, the whole song. But then they believe you.
Then they believe me. Yeah, the kids.
Sorry, And now I have to like do like a few lines to like flowers, and then I've been stuck.
And then they get it. Oh yeah, now I believe you. Yeah I wasn't shot, but now I got it.
Yeah.
No, they don't get it. Even when I do the voice, you know, like I don't know who I am. They don't get it because his face scares them.
No, no, you.
Got you gotta sing this, you gotta do the wrap part.
Oh, I forget that, that's not happening. Yeah, that's got in the pocket.
Yeah, that's a hard one.
Now let me switch it over to something else. You're child of immigrants and every immigrant. Yes, thank you. I've had a go Okay, what do you want people to know about your experience growing up?
Yeah?
Well, when I was fourteen, my parents were separated from me. I am a child of a separated family due to deportation. And it, I mean it ruined a lot, a lot of it ruined me.
Yeah yeah, yeah, because you were fourteen years old. You were fourteen years old, yeah, yeah yeah. And the police, the immigration I in s Ice came and took away your parents.
And that's right. And I had to grow up on my own, and.
I had to make very very difficult decisions on my own throughout my entire life.
I imagine a kid just left alone at fourteen to raise themselves. So crazy, not right?
Not okay?
And I mean I've gone through a lot of therapy and I'm still going through therapy, and I'm you.
Know, beauerful.
I thank you.
I've relied on my community to support me in this, and I have been very candid. I wrote a book in twenty sixteen, my experience and the people, my family and I were separated, like for twenty years. I mean, I've been able to go back, but they haven't been able to come here. And so, you know, pandemic happened and I was like, what am I going to do here? Like die in La by myself? So I bought a farm in the mountains of Plombia and I'm now I'm living there. My dad sadly passed away a year ago, but thank you so much, but my mom is there. I'm close to my family and no one's ever going to separate us everything.
Now.
I also hear that you're the leading actor who recently enjoyed no join a whole bunch of leading actors in the visionary a line to the National Hispanic Media Coalition. I had to read that because that's.
Not the leading actor.
You're not the leading actor.
No, I'm not the leading actor. I'm one of the actors, one of them.
Okay, yes, and then and what is the mission statement of the coalition?
Look, and I'll give you numbers.
I'm not a math girly, but I'll give you some numbers.
And in twenty twenty two, only.
Three women of color directed a.
Top one hundred film in.
The span of sixteen years. Okay, twenty one female directors. Women of color directors directed twenty one films out of.
Sixteen hundred films.
That's crazy.
I'm not a math girly, like I said.
And people of color are at least forty percent of the population, if not a lot more, because white people are only fifty nine percent of the population.
Right right, So I mean that's getting into more numbers than I rehearsed.
But I'm a math boy.
You are a mouth.
Well, all I know is that that's cultural aparthep, yes, right, And I know that's the term that you use a lot.
And I follow you and I follow your work. Thank you so much, Johnny Looz for doing.
Yeah and inquiring me to do.
The work that I'm doing alongside you.
Well, we need allies, and we need people like you. We need soldiers out there.
Thank you. We want representation.
We want we want.
We want the right kind of representation.
We're tired of the only things getting made about us drug lords, criminals, cops, rights, Yeah, yeah right what we we We want to be represented as we are real, beautiful, curious.
Uh you know, existential crises happened, and yes maybe and yes maybe even mediocre and in some days sometimes right and if something.
Why people get to be mediocre all the time. I mean, I'm jealous because white people get to fail upwards, just perus. Just I can barely succeed upwards.
Agreed, likewise, just perus through the cannon, the cannon of like mediocre films of.
Functional World, Jack, Jack and Jail.
The cannon is rich. We deserve to be.
Allowed to fail on camera in big movies we make credit. I want to make crap on television, on streaming. I want to be like white people.
I want to make man wooly Man, meat ball, get paid, get paid for nobody paid for it.
Test to do that, you have to work really well. In sushi kitchens, pezzias. We got to cook all the food of this goddamn country.
Just like we deserve to be excellent, we deserve to make crap as well and everything in between.
Thank you so much. I've been thinking about the term people of color came out p O POC. I loved it. I thought, oh my god, this is so incredible. It's going to unify us, it's going to bring us together, it's going to make us stronger. And then I started to see that people of color was sort of working, but it was excluding Latin people even more. Like, I started to see that Latin people were not being included, that we were actually less included. So I started having beef for the New York Times because I was like, there's no Latin stories. Where Latin stories. Where your Latin journalists? I mean there were no names there. I mean I was looking for those names, but you can only see it when they were like showing the Yankees sports pages or you know, and I'm not going to you know. So they got upset with me because I was upset at them, and then they called me up and said, John, you're so wrong because we've got we were about ten percent more people of color. That's fantastic, that's so awesome. That's my dream come true. How many of those people are Latin? None? Now they have maybe one or two percent journalists at the New York Times, but it's not enough. You know, I don't want to be reading about Latin Sofito recipes written by Heidi and the term people of color is cool, but not if it's excluding Land people. I mean, we're half of the people of color. People of color are forty percent of the US population, and we're fifty percent of that POC, but we're less than than one percent of the leads and movies and television and streaming, less than one percent of the stories being told, less than zero point something one percent of the executives. Now, and I'm starting to think that do we have to get more aggressive? Do we have to get more assertive about ourselves? Do we have to start like boycotting, picketing call obviously calling hunger strikes. What do we have to do to make this change? Because it's got to happen in my lifetime. It's got to happen before my kids get old and before you know, before I pass. It's got to change.
Now.
Make the Puerto Rican Day Parade like longer, go up every street. Make the Port Rigon Day Parade for a month. Do we cancel Hamilton? My guest tonight is the pream of the New York Underground, A rapper, songwriter and actor.
And when new EP.
Is called I Love You, but this is goodbye, Please welcome Princess No kia okay o. Bring Let at that reception?
Oh no, I love you.
Were a look at that. Yeah, now you're you're a hip you're a multi hyphen a singer, actor, producer, director, voice. Oh that, but isn't the idea of being very successful to have to work less?
Yes, I mean some would say working harder, not smarter. I am a multi hyphenate. I've done so many things musician, actress, comedian, director, songwriter.
And what drives that, what drives all.
That creativity, you know, the need to want to express myself taking boredom and you know they say, uh, bored idleness is the double playground, and I don't ever want to be in the douvile's playground.
I just want to have fun.
Yeah, and you do it, and your working so powerful. I mean, I'm so inspired by you. And you chose your stage named Nokia because the telephone is so undestructible and you're indestructible.
I would say, so it's a finished company.
At the time, I was using Obama phones because you know, we was just that poor, so I couldn't call myself Princess Obama Phone, and I just know I was I was too young to have an Okia, but I chose something with a futurist angle because I liked the idea of having something old and new and they you know, Disney princesses, all their moms are dead and my mom's dead, so I figured, well, let me add a little dead humor to that as well.
I love the way you mix it all together. It's amazing we're both with both street kids. Yes, you know, I went to the fresh air fun that survived the public New York City public school system. Uh, how do you use your street streetness and your lens of the Latini dad to do your storytelling?
Oh?
Well, I was really fortunate to grow up in an extremely vivid cultural upbringing. You know, being Afro Indigenous was what I was supposed to do on the weekend when my girlfriends was playing double Dutch and hanging rope, I was at Powell. It's just like why, you know, like I loved my upbringing. But it's funny because you know, there's so many inter intersections of my childhood. And there's the public school, you know, being in Jefferson Park with my friends, and then there was the times where I didn't connect with my friends, where I didn't get to have sneakers or you know, be wearing lip glows that I had to you know, go to ceremonies or go to the un to do a performance of the sort. But I think that, you know, I'm very street, I'm very I'm very protective.
You know.
I was taught to fight with my words in my hands and be vivacious and be protective. And I am protective of myself and my loved ones.
Yeah.
No, it comes out in your work. I mean, I'm such a big fan of your work because you know, I feel like I see myself in you, you know, and it revitalizes me as a as an older artist, seeing like the young latinas that have, you know, such self worth and strength and vivacity and not afraid of their power and strength. Yeah. I was telling.
John, I was telling I was telling uh to the crowd. Is the camera here here? I was telling John earlier that he's one of my biggest inspirations. Is him and markin Lawrence that created my identity.
Yeah, I feel I feel like we're about the same height. We're both shortcans. I'm there too, Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, Like I watched Freak sex Aholic Spicherama Ghetto Clown, Like Jesus, you.
Watch that inappropriate crap?
Come on, no, they allowed me to watch it. It was the it was our household thing. We saw you and we saw ourselves.
That's beautiful. Pause, thank you, bang girl. I mean when I wrote my stuff, I wanted to write it for all the young Latino kids that weren't seeing themselves and that they felt invisible, and I wanted them to feel like I saw them. You know, That's why I wrote it. Now, you got your new EP coming out right.
It's a radio that's okay, everything is misinformed.
But this is about love, right.
This is.
How many rumors have you heard about?
Oh yeah, but it's about love though. This is the first time you're talking about love. You've never been this vulnerable before? Why now?
It was?
It was the time it was I was speaking. I always speak from my heart. I always speak from a personal experience.
You know.
Nineteen ninety two covers my my life as a child growing up and all the intersections of my life from childhood to adult. You know, girl, Ca read is about my love for rock music. Everything is beautiful. It's a neo soul jazz album with R and B. Everything sucks kind of have like an ICP effect to it. It was a little bit more fun in this. I stripped it down. I wanted to sing. I always say when I am sing, I'm happy, and when I sing, I'm sad. And when I got the blues, I sing, so I had the blues and I was going to get married in uh that dress and I didn't. And I like using, no.
It's okay, that's this is it's okay.
Like I'm a young woman. And I said this to Billboard the Insider. I said, everyone is so used to me being the rapper, the strong woman, the soup thrower, you know, the voice of a generation, but no one has ever heard me or and I've never allowed myself to be that vulnerable. I don't talk about my personal life like online, so no one would know who I'm dating. No one knows who I'm talking about. It's no one I've ever posted publicly. So someone could have an idea, and they completely have no idea what's going on. So I put all of these intricate things about a failed relationship, but the takeaway of the project is really that that person was inter excuse me, that person allowed me to feel love. They allowed me to feel a little something. You know, I hadn't felt I hadn't dated it in like five years. Wow, And like I think that, like, I just, you know, hooked up with my child's sweetheart and we had a love tunnel and it was fabulous and it was hot and saucy and sexy and then scary and then scary, and we were going to get married and it was going to be amazing. And then I left because it didn't serve me when I said my hot purpose and I spoke to God and God said get your ass out there, and I said, okay, And but I tell him he's listened to the music, he loves the project. He was still good friends.
You know, we were apart, and I want to go back to that soup thing.
What happened?
What happened in that public adding, I'm not kidding. I don't know if you all know what happened? Well, was she going to tell you?
Now?
I've never spoken about it publicly because I public attention gives me nervous. And I was on the front of the Metro or in the Metro and I was like, oh.
My god, my name is like in the paper.
Because it went viral, that video went viral.
I still don't realize. I realized that I'm a person of interest. Like for me, I'm just destiny.
Well, if you throw hot soup in somebody's face, you're gonna be aest to a lot of people.
This is what happened. This is from this iss mouth before that man's start saying slurs. A group of young men who are like on a basketball team, black and Latino brothers, and I remember thinking, Wow, look at kids getting air, being outside, being healthy, playing sports. That's a beautiful thing.
You look. Oh, oh my people, look at oh, look at young.
Men being a gentleman.
Okay.
And this man came onto the train and he bumped them purposely, and that was the first thing I seen. I seen an adult bump of child, and I thought that was very weird. And then when they got off, he drunkenly just said these had words and I got up and I said, how dare you? And I just sucked him in the eye and he called.
Me so I didn't want to say that. I didn't want to say that.
I said it on Twitter once, but I don't want to say that to publications in case he tried to sue me. But you know, I was like, we got some money. So that's actually what happened. There was a whole discourse before the soup the soupers. What happened very last, what I says, You're not about to talk about black people like that, not in my face. I would never like xenophobia and anti blackness. That makes my skin crawl eye like that.
And you can't stay quiet because if you stay quiet, then you're you're you're kind of guilty.
Well, people stay quiet because people are crazy. You don't know what they're capable of. He could have punched me back, He could have slapped me, he could have spinn me, and I have been punched back before.
Standing enough for myself.
I got really lucky. Then he started hurling racial slurs at me. And when I said what I said, I said to him very distinctly, you don't ever talk about people like that. Don't ever fix your mouth to say something like that. A whole bunch of men came to my aid and it was brothers and like people just it was like this. The train of New York just came behind my back and these two brothers they looked at me and said, we got you to this. I said, okay, and then we and then everybody like white black, polka dot red, was like, you can't talk like that.
That's not okay as white men. And there was white men going, dude, what's wrong with me? Are you sick?
And that I was everybody.
It was.
It was like I was a rapt and it was so you're gonna make me cry. That made me take it because we.
All collectively threw him off the train.
It was done. You see the mom man, they're throwing him.
And I had just went to Panera bread and got me a butternut squash and I that was my thing. I used to get me a butternut squash soup and go.
To Brooklyn and you know, be a New Yorker.
And I was like, well, ship, excuse me, I'm sorry. Oh well from me, he'd done seve racial slurs. He done got in my face, he done made a fool of himself. He about to get this soup too. So I just I was like, you know what, I've already punched him.
I've already done that.
That's all off camera, I said. I remember I went to get my bag because I was like, I got my bag and then I was.
Like, sou and witho even thinking about it, without don't even thinking about it, it's in two seconds, I swear to God, it was from fourteenth Street to the first stop of the L.
Train, so you know that underground tunnel is like extra three minutes, so it's like it felt like a long time, but it was just one train.
Stop and it was it was. It was wild and I and I stand behind that.
You know, I was taught. I was taught to always if you are about something, be about something. And I would never strike my brother sister unless they you know, provoked the first. But when it comes to defending blackness or you know, Latin being indigenous anything, you know that I am maybe it vulnerable, Yeah, absolutely, And we were just at a point in the time society, like in society where that rhetoric was just so you know, and I caught that man his.
Face because you got it like that, you got She's she's a poetess, a singer, sensitive and she can knock you out, I mean, the other perfect woman.
I'm pretty frail, but I would like to think that I can always, you know, if a friend is in need.
I can help. Well, I'm a friend in need.
If you ever need me, I got you back. I love you, thanks for coming, I love you. But this guy's available now explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching the Daily Show wherever you.
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