Simone Carter - Thursday
Actress and writer Julissa Calderon poses on set in Los Angeles, California, on August 23, 2021. The star is speaking out against "brownface" in Hollywood amid Hispanic Heritage Month.
© Rachel Murray/Getty Images for for California Milk Processor Board
Latino stars are once again speaking out against "brownface" in Hollywood as Hispanic Heritage Month begins on Thursday.
For years, non-white actors and activists have demanded better representation in television and film. Those pushing for change argue that far too often, white actors are cast to play Latinos. Sometimes, their skin is even darkened for the role.
Actress Julissa Calderon, who stars in Gentefied on Netflix, is helping to lead the charge.
"You're sitting here and telling me that you are browning yourself up for a role, that millions of brown people already have that skin color, they could do it," she told Good Morning America in a clip posted to Twitter on Thursday. "Why are we doing that?"
Latino stars are once again speaking out against "brownface" in Hollywood as Hispanic Heritage Month begins on Thursday.
For years, non-white actors and activists have demanded better representation in television and film. Those pushing for change argue that far too often, white actors are cast to play Latinos. Sometimes, their skin is even darkened for the role.
Actress Julissa Calderon, who stars in Gentefied on Netflix, is helping to lead the charge.
"You're sitting here and telling me that you are browning yourself up for a role, that millions of brown people already have that skin color, they could do it," she told Good Morning America in a clip posted to Twitter on Thursday. "Why are we doing that?"
Hispanic Heritage Month lasts until October 15, with this Friday marking Mexican Independence Day.
Outrage mounted last month after it was announced that actor James Franco had been cast to play Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro in an upcoming film, Axios reported at the time. Latino writers, activists and actors blasted the move, pointing out that just 5.4 percent of movie leads in 2020 were held by Latinos.
Good Morning America's segment also noted that some of Hollywood's most famous Latino roles have been embodied by white actors.
In West Side Story, for instance, Natalie Wood and George Chakiris were cast as Puerto Rican siblings living in New York City. Al Pacino played Cuban drug lord Tony Montana in Scarface, a part that earned him a Golden Globe nomination for best actor in a motion picture drama.
Actor John Leguizamo slammed Latino appropriation in an August tweet and called for the industry to update its practices.
"Latin exclusion in Hollywood is real! Don't get it twisted! Long long history of it! & appropriation of our stories even longer!" he wrote on August 7. "Why can't Latinxers play Latin roles? Why can't we play lead roles? Why can't we they flip white roles to Latinx? We r the most excluded group in Amrca."
In 2019, just 5.9 percent of speaking roles in the top 100 movies were Hispanic or Latino characters, according to a survey by USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. That same year, Pew Research Center reported that Latinos accounted for some 18 percent of the total U.S. population.
Some said there's still work to do in Hollywood, but Gentefied's Calderon is looking ahead.
"We are saying something. People are not staying quiet," she told Good Morning America. "We're in the rooms and we're figuring it out, and we have to continue to have these conversations so that we can move the needle forward."
Newsweek reached out to a representative for Calderon for comment.
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