Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez is taking a step towards more diversity in Hollywood by launching a social media campaign aimed at promoting fellow Latino actors.
Hollywood bigwigs have been under fire following the lack of diversity at this year’s (16) Oscar nominations, and in an effort to change the trend, Rodriguez, who is Puerto Rican-American, took to her Whosay account on Monday (25Jan16) to announce a new initiative called #MovementMonday, a weekly campaign to highlight various Latino members of the television and film industry.
Rodriguez’s first choice was Star Wars: The Force Awakens star Oscar Isaac, and in addition to posting a photo of him, she wrote, “This is Oscar Isaac. He is a Guatemalan American actor…. With all this Oscar (Academy Awards) Talk and lack of diversity I decided to start a movement and speak from the perspective of a Latina American who desires to see more Latinos on screen.”
“There are 55 million Latinos in this country and although we all come from various backgrounds our unity can make a movie explode at the box office or a tv show sore to the highest viewers possible. The better these projects do financially, the more money they will spend on putting Latinos In blockbuster films, as leads in tv shows Etc.”
She continued, “My solution is this, support is needed. Right now there isn’t one Latino that can Greenlight a movie. That means no studio will put their money behind a Latino face as a lead of a movie because they don’t believe we can make their money back. I am told time and time again ‘Latinos dont watch Latino Movies. Latinos don’t support each other’ and sadly that is true. I’m not saying go and see a movie you don’t like to blind support, im saying if you want to see us represented on film and tv, if you want to see Latinos nominated for Oscars, we NEED to support one another.”
She concluded, “We can make a difference in a very powerful way if we unite our support as one Latino community. Oscar Isaac, in my opinion had an Oscar worthy performance in this film. Let’s start making noise with where it matters most, where we put our dollars. Go support these films, watch these shows and we can take making a change into our own hands.”
