Michelle Rodriguez recently made some fans unhappy when she spoke out against race-blind casting in superhero movies. “It’s so stupid,” she said. “Stop stealing all the white people’s superheroes. Make up your own.”
The “Furious 7” star apologized for her comments, but renewed the call for more character archetypes and different types of stories in another characteristically blunt interview. Looking back on her career trajectory, Rodriguez said, “I’m really picky about the parts I choose. I can’t be the slut. I cannot be just the girlfriend. I can’t be the girl who gets empowered because she’s been raped. I can’t be the girl who gets empowered and then dies. So I just said to myself, look, you’re going to just have to create your own archetype, doesn’t matter if you go broke doing it.”
Of course, it’s not easy being an uncompromising feminist in an industry rife with sexism up and down the ladder. “I almost did go broke, twice!” the actress admitted. “But people finally got it: OK, Michelle is not malleable, you’re not going to influence her by shining fame and money at her, and they stopped offering me that sort of stuff. But you know, it’s a Catch-22. It’s helped me and it’s screwed me. I’ve stuck to my guns and I’m proud and people get it. But I also haven’t carried a movie since ‘Girlfight.’”
Rodriguez also observed that the film industry still has trouble seeing powerful women stay powerful. “I remember this script that came over my desk and it’s — I’m not even going to name it, it’ll just get me in more trouble — but I was reading it and at first I wanted to say no, because she’s Latina and she’s a drug dealer, and that’s like the only time you see Latin-Americans in Hollywood pictures. But I kept reading and I thought, well, some of it is based on truth, and she’s kind of an interesting person. And then I turn the page and they’ve stuck in this rape scene. Which didn’t even happen in real life, they just stuck it in there, this made-up thing and I thought, why? Why it is necessary to take her down like that? I mean, like ‘Million Dollar Baby’ — why’s she got to die at the end, man? I mean, I get the tear-jerking, but would you do that to a male character?”
“It’s our fault as women for not penetrating that market, you know? I can’t complain about the scripts that are out there until I start writing some myself,” she concluded — a statement we can’t quite get behind, considering the routine dismissal of women’s stories and voices in Hollywood. But we look forward to the stories about unflinching female power that Rodriguez will likely come up with.
[via NJ.com]
