Godmothered’s Santiago Cabrera On Diversity In Film

When I first arrived as a Latin American here, I very quickly realized that I was seen as a race not as a culture, being Latino. I lived in England and I could do an American accent or speak like an Englishman, but it was like, ‘What are you doing? You’re meant to speak as a Latino and you’re meant to be playing these kinds of roles.’ So that’s always been a battle. Now, my initial instinct was like, why are we making reference to colors all the time and why are we making it so obvious like this person should be Caucasian and this person should be this, like I didn’t understand why everybody was pointing fingers at it, and then you start to understand the history of America and you go, ‘It’s very necessary.” Because if not, people don’t get it anywhere and these conversations need to be had. So I kind of very quickly understood what a necessary fight it is to have but I think, in an ideal world, we would just cast people for being people, you know?