Gina Rodriguez Slams Hollywood For Lack Of Latino Leads

Gina Rodriguez called out Hollywood for not casting Latinos as leads during the Screen Actors Guild Awards’ red carpet Sunday. 

The actress broke down why Latino representation is so overdue while speaking with E! News correspondent Nina Parker about her upcoming projects, which include major roles in Paramount Pictures’ sci-fi thriller “Annihilation” and Sony Pictures’ action film “Miss Bala.”

“Yay, Sony, for putting a Latino in the lead, because barely people do that,” Rodriguez said, turning her attention to the camera to make her point. “I mean, we do make [up] 55 million plus  in the country — no big deal — you should throw us in a movie or two, it would make sense. We do buy 1 in every 4 tickets every single weekend and make sure that your movies do well. So it would do you a service. And not only service, it would be — I don’t know — integrity. So thank you, Paramount and Sony, because you two are driving the game, you’re doing it. You’re opening the doors.”

The “Jane the Virgin” star’s points go beyond leading roles, as Hollywood fails to cast Latinos in many speaking roles at all. Only 3.1 percent of speaking characters were Latino in 2016′s top 100 films, according to a report  by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Meanwhile, Latinos make up 17.8 percent of the U.S. population and bought 21 percent of movie tickets sold in 2016, according to the Motion Picture Association of America’s Theatrical Market Statistics .

Rodriguez was accompanied by her “Jane the Virgin” co-star Yael Grobglas, who pointed out that the star recently directed her first episode of The CW series. Rodriguez then revealed that her episode will premiere on Feb. 9.