John Leguizamo jokes that if white actors keep getting cast in Latino roles, he's going to cast hims

June 2024 ยท 3 minute read
2023-03-28T16:48:53Z

While highlighting Latino underrepresentation in Hollywood, John Leguizamo joked that he might take a role from a white actor by playing Gwyneth Paltrow in a movie about her ongoing ski-accident trial.

The actor, who stars in Prime Video's "The Power," guest hosted "The Daily Show" after the departure of its host Trevor Noah. In a recent episode, Leguizamo spoke about the phenomenon of white actors like James Franco, who was cast as Fidel Castro in the film "Alina of Cuba," being cast in Latino roles.

"Well, guess what? If white people can take our roles, I'm going to take theirs," Leguizamo said.

"When they do the TV series based on Gwyneth Paltrow's ski-accident trial, I'm going to be Gwyneth Paltrow," he continued, before launching into an impression of the actor and Goop founder.

A Utah jury found that Paltrow was not at fault in a 2016 ski accident involving retired optometrist Terry Sanderson, Insider reported. Sanderson sued Paltrow in 2019, claiming that she ran into him while distracted and alleging that the incident had resulted in a traumatic brain injury and four broken ribs, Insider previously reported.

Paltrow disputed parts of Sanderson's story and countersued, saying that Sanderson ran into her. The jury found that Sanderson was at fault in the incident, ordering him to pay $1 in damages as Paltrow's team had requested. The trial became social media fodder, with clips from the livestreamed event going viral on TikTok. 

Leguizamo has been outspoken about the dearth of Latino representation in Hollywood, writing an open letter to the industry in the Los Angeles Times in 2022 about the long-standing issue.

"You may think Lin-Manuel Miranda, Bad Bunny, J Lo, Benicio del Toro and I are the only ones, but you are wrong," he wrote. "There are millions of Latinos, and we were just among the few to be allowed through."

A USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study published in 2021 of 1,300 of the top-grossing films from 2007 to 2019 found that only 3.5% of leads and co-leads in those films were Hispanic or Latino, despite the group composing 18.7% of the US population.

In December 2022, Leguizamo told Insider that it was "odd" to act opposite white actors like Al Pacino, who played a Latino character in the film "Carlito's Way." He recounted another instance in which he said he was denied a role because of an "unspoken 'Latin quota'" in a film, adding that the director told him he couldn't "have two Latin people in the movie."

"I can't tell you how many times in my career I've been told at auditions that I sound too Latino, not Latino enough, that Latinos don't want to watch other Latinos, all sorts of madness," he said on "The Daily Show."

 

Watch: Gwyneth Paltrow in court for allegedly skiing 'out of control'

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