For Tonatiuh, from West Covina to sharing screens with Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna on “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” it happened at a whiplash-inducing rate.
“I received an email on December 19th with the materials,” recalls the 30-year-old actor’s audition process. “So the industry was closed by that point and I submitted it. And by 8am until December 22nd, they didn’t move.”
By January he was playing tango and Bob Fosse numbers directed by Bill Condon. Shortly afterwards, he was cast for the dual roles of Louis Molina and Kendall Nesbitt in the musical adaptation of the novel Manuel Puig, which won William in the 1985 film version. The parts required extreme physical conversion. Away from Netflix’s hit “Carry-On,” Tonatiuh had to drop nearly 50 pounds in just over a month.
In 12 episodes of the Variety Awards circuit this season, Tonatiuh will open about winning a breakout role in a musical that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Additionally, he shares a story about how he navigated the industry, how his Latino identity is his superpower, and what he wants people to know about him. Listen below!
“Spider woman kissing”
(Lions Gate/Roadside attraction)
For Tonatiuh, playing Molina – a gay window dresser imprisoned during the dirty war in Argentina, escaping elaborate cinema fantasy – provided something rare.
“My mission statement with Molina was to have someone with little gender or gender care,” he says. “They cover all of that whole, because we all believe that it encompasses the whole of it.”
The film allowed him to play multiple personas in the story. “I’m not just playing Morina, I can also play Kendall Nesbitt in the secondary world,” he says. “If Morina is somewhere in the middle, I want Kendall to be the traditional masculine aesthetic and energy, and there’s also the opportunity to explore full femininity within the show.”
One of the film’s most powerful sequences, the musical number “Where You Are,” created an unexpectedly emotional moment for the actor when his mother visited the set. “Here I’m next to Jennifer Lopez and she’s singing these words to me, my mother is watching it,” he recalls. “What kind of meta, what kind of reality is happening at this moment?”
The scene features Lopez’s character Aurora, which draws Morina into a movie fantasy. It imitates the life of an actor once considered impossible. When his mother met Lopez on set, she went to her and thanked the superstar for giving her the opportunity. Lopez’s response stuck to him: “I didn’t give him the opportunity. He won it.”
Tonatiuh is unhappy with the conversation that treats Latino success in Hollywood as a surprising or exception. Armed with statistics, he is ready to turn the story over.
“We’re in the Latin Hollywood Renaissance. Latin Americans are Hollywood. I’m not a Latin actor. I’m a great actor. Jennifer Lopez is not a Latin talent. She is a great talent,” he declares. “Latinos are 24% of US filmmakers, one in four tickets. In 2023 alone, $2.7 trillion was created and spent by Latinx audiences. That’s more than the economy of New York and Texas.”
He continues: “I don’t want to participate in it anymore. This brings back greatness to our name.”
Molina’s role represents a groundbreaking performance. Furthermore, after years of becoming “delicious”, it marks a return to authenticity. In fourth grade, when his family moved to West Covina, the teacher saw his name and said she couldn’t pronounce it.
“I changed my name to mat from fourth grade to third grade (in high school). I self-colonized. I even forced my parents to change my name to mat.”
Then, when he pursued acting professionally, industry advice pushed him to change his presentation. “I was told by someone who thinks I’m trying to help me that the way the methods I presented moved across the world would never get the career I wanted.
That strategy worked – he landed the regular roles of the series and studio films. But something was lost.
“With Molina, I returned to my whole being,” he says. “It was no longer a compartmentalization. From my most feminine to my most masculine, I am. My Latinda and my Americanity are me. My love for film and my love for musicals is me.”
His message to those who can’t accept it? “They can suffocate who I am.”
When only five Latinx men were nominated for Best Actor in Oscar history, and only one winner admitted that they didn’t know the statistics. The revelation clearly moves him.
“It’s pretty amazing and I want to speak my work for myself. If I were part of it, it would be incredible, but I would like it to be for crafts, not my identity,” he says.
He considers the present moment to be critical.
Despite Oscar’s talk surrounding “Spider Woman Kiss” at the theater on October 10th, Tonatiu focuses on: “I’m looking for work security, Boo.
He is particularly interested in Broadway and hints at certain plays working on options. And when someone recently proposed that he could play the villain in a Bond movie, his response was characteristically bold: “Yeah, but what if I was a bond?
And yes, he can add a British accent.
For now, he is content to let the audience discover and rediscover him through Molina, a character who refuses to diminish even in the darkest circumstances. “Let me reintroduce myself,” he says with a smile.
Also in this episode is Oscar-nominated Haley Steinfeld, and one of the stars of writer and director Ryan Cooler’s “The Crime.”
Hosted by Clayton Davis, Jazz Tankay, Emily Morkate, Jenelle Riley and Michael Schneider, Variety’s “Award Circuit” podcast is the one-stop source of the best lively conversations in film and television. Each episode, “Awards Circuit,” features interviews with discussions and debates on top film and television talent, creative, award races and industry headlines. Subscribe via Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, or where you download podcasts.
