In earlier interviews she acknowledged that there were struggles along the way. There was a time not so long ago that queer actresses could not be 'out'. She shone in Apple’s delightful musical comedy series Schmigadoon!. She received a Tony nomination for her co-lead performance in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. ![]() She appeared in the original cast of Hamilton. She made her TV debut in the talent show So You Think You Can Dance. Because there's not just one way to be Latina."ĭeBose is still just 30, but she has already packed her CV to groaning point. And when you cast an actress like myself, who is Afro-Latina, it's a step in the right direction towards celebrating the fullness of the diaspora. And we have 50 Puerto Rican characters portrayed by folks of Hispanic descent. In this case, Latinos should be playing Latinos. It's really important that - especially within cultural stories - we reflect back to the audience exactly who these people are. "I really applaud Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner and our casting director Cindy Tolan for their commitment to authenticity. Will we ever go back to that dubious practice? Moreno was from that background, but Natalie Wood, who played Maria, was "browned up" in a fashion that would be unacceptable now. Photograph: 20th Century StudiosĪmong the biggest changes from the 1961 version is that Latino actors now play all the Puerto Rican characters. Rita is the noisy, charismatic realist who, in America, the show's centrepiece, lays out an ambiguous, cynical vision of the nation's relationship with its non-white immigrants.Īriana DeBose as Anita in West Side Story. Nobody will need to be told that the original show - music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by the recently mourned Stephen Sondheim - adapts Romeo and Juliet into a rivalry between gangs in 1950s New York City. DeBose’s father was of Afro-Puerto Rican descent. It should probably be left to Latino critics to tease out how the differences in backgrounds alter the flavours of the two performances. I really applaud Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner and our casting director Cindy Tolan for their commitment to authenticity Rita’s performance is iconic and timeless, and it will remain so.” But, when I was offered this role, I did make the decision to not seek out the film again - because I wasn’t trying to duplicate or recycle anything that had already been done. And, by virtue of my work on Broadway, I was well versed in West Side Story and Jerome Robbins’s choreography and so on. I first saw it when I was seven or eight,” she tells me. She was literally and figuratively looking over DeBose's shoulder. ![]() ![]() Rita Moreno won an Oscar as the character in the 1961 film and returns in a new role for Spielberg. The North Carolinian actor, who excels as the irrepressible Anita, was faced with more challenges than most. None turned heads with quite such a whiplash as the already experienced Ariana DeBose. Steven Spielberg's infectious take on West Side Story - a Broadway staple for 60 years - has already turbo-boosted the careers of half-a-dozen hitherto promising young performers.
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