John Leguizamo was prepared to guide a dramatic TV collection — so he helped create a platform to stream it

When John Leguizamo spoke out about diversity on Sunday evening’s Emmy Awards telecast, he stated, the viewers on the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles “received actual quiet.” 

“I’m one among Hollywood’s DEI hires,” he stated from the stage. “That’s proper. DEI: The D is for ‘diligence,’ the E is for ‘excellence,’ the I is for ‘creativeness.’” He stated the business usually engaged in “brownface” casting, citing Marlon Brando in “Viva Zapata!” Al Pacino in “Scarface” and Natalie Wooden in “West Aspect Story.”

“Everyone performed us,” Leguizamo stated, “besides us.” 

Leguizamo stated in an interview that, as he spoke that night, he may see folks within the viewers begin to nod alongside. “At first you could possibly hear a pin drop,” he stated. “Then it began build up momentum, and folks had been applauding and laughing and cheering. It was an unimaginable second, and I felt like all people had my again.”

Now, in his newest collection, Leguizamo is taking part in what he calls a “despicable, hateable character” — and he needs as many individuals as attainable to see it.

For Hispanic Heritage Month 2024, Leguizamo is partnering with Comcast to make his new present, “The Inexperienced Veil” out there for viewing on his new streaming platform, The Community. The present will likely be provided to clients ad-free for one month on Xfinity X1, Flex, and different leisure platforms. Comcast is the mother or father firm of NBC Information.

“The Community (platform) is free, all it’s important to do is subscribe,” Leguizamo stated. “We’re doing a platform for numerous, high quality tales, essential tales.”

“The Inexperienced Veil” is an eight-episode drama starring Leguizamo in his first lead position on a dramatic tv collection. He performs Gordon Rogers, a authorities agent within the Nineteen Fifties assigned on an unraveling secret mission.

Though Leguizamo describes “The Inexperienced Veil” as “historic fiction,” it attracts on real-life occasions. Till Congress handed the Indian Little one Welfare Act (ICWA) in 1978, federal and state governments forcibly separated as many as one-third of all Native American youngsters from their households and houses, normally to be positioned exterior their communities. The Supreme Courtroom upheld the ICWA final yr.

The series explores problems with identification, assimilation and Latino and Native American historical past. The present launched in April and has already been renewed for a second season.

Leguizamo was drawn to “The Inexperienced Veil” partially as a result of it’s a interval piece, and Latinos are normally not included in such initiatives. “Hollywood acts as if we didn’t exist till simply now; they act as if we simply received right here,” he stated. “We’ve been right here since a minimum of 1492, but it surely’s like we’re erased from historical past within the media.”

“The Inexperienced Veil” is very essential to Leguizamo as a result of a number of networks handed on it, main him to assist launch the brand new streaming platform created by Aram Rappaport, who also wrote and directed the show.

“We didn’t get picked up,” Leguizamo stated. “It’s nonetheless a system that doesn’t cater to folks of coloration, particularly Latinos. We’re essentially the most excluded group in Hollywood. We now have to create our personal platforms. We now have to create our own content. We now have to do it ourselves as a result of no person provides up energy voluntarily.”

Though Latinos are a driving force at the box office, they’re nonetheless underrepresented each behind and in entrance of the digital camera. The Latino Donor Collaborative found that the variety of Latino leads on TV and movie grew by solely barely final yr — 2.6% to three.3% for tv, 5.1% to five.7% in movie.

Leguizamo is named an actor, producer and longtime advocate for Latino illustration within the leisure business. On display screen, he has portrayed characters starting from Toulouse-Lautrec (in “Moulin Rouge”) to pull queen Miss Chi-Chi Rodriguez (“To Wong Foo, Thanks for All the things!”). He gained a particular Tony Award for in 2018 for his one-man Broadway show “Latin Historical past for Morons.”

Whereas “The Inexperienced Veil” is the flagship collection for The Community, the platform will even supply different unique programming, corresponding to “Chivalry,” a comedy collection, and “Kingdom of Dreams,” a docuseries set within the vogue world.

Leguizamo is an entrepreneur throughout the leisure business. His miniseries “American Historia: The Untold Historical past of Latinos” will premiere on PBS on Sept. 27, and his new play, “The Different People,” begins a run at Enviornment Stage in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 19. His acclaimed docuseries “Leguizamo Does America” will return for a second season on MSNBC subsequent yr. He’s additionally a producer of the musical “Buena Vista Social Membership,” which is able to open on Broadway in March.

Leguizamo’s work is impressed by the eagerness he feels for genuine Latino tales and by the response he has seen from audiences. “The enjoyment that I see in Latin folks, within the viewers, from followers and from our Black, Asian and white allies — it’s all the things.”

“Folks step as much as me on the street and say they love the tradition I symbolize, and that fuels me,” he added. “That fuels me a lot. That love and suggestions I get, it makes me really feel like I’ve radioactive energy inside me.”

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