Gina Rodriguez talks 'Miss Bala' and the tension of navigating two worlds

By Arturo Conde

In the new movie “Miss Bala,” Golden Globe-winning actress Gina Rodriguez plays Gloria, a young makeup artist who takes down the Mexican drug cartel after her friend Suzu gets kidnapped at a nightclub. But for Rodriguez — a Puerto Rican actress best known for her breakout TV role in “Jane the Virgin” — the cross-border crime thriller tells a larger story about the in-between places that shape the lives of many Americans.

“I really connected with Gloria in the movie because I know what it’s like to feel like you’re connected when you really aren’t, like you’re part of the fabric of this culture and this country, and yet know that others see you differently.” Rodriguez told NBC News. “I think Gloria wants to understand, identify with something, and be seen as that. And that’s why I can relate with her, because she has to balance two different lives.”

The film, which premieres on Friday, shows how borders can divide people externally and internally between shifting sides— good vs. evil, beauty vs. grit, insiders vs. outsiders.

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, of the 2008 romantic vampire movie “Twilight,” “Miss Bala” is an English-language version of the 2011 Mexican film co-produced by “Narcos” star Diego Luna and “Mozart in the Jungle” star Gael Garcia Bernal.

Rodriguez said that Hollywood studio Sony invested $15 million to re-imagine the movie for the next generation of Latinx viewers who want to see themselves represented in front and behind the camera. The film’s cast and crew are 95 percent Latino, Rodriguez said.

While the story of a beauty pageant contestant being abducted by the Mexican drug cartel is hard to relate to, viewers may recognize the emotional and cultural tensions the main characters navigate as they cross borders and figure out who they are. The city of Tijuana, Mexico, becomes a dramatic stage where everyday people learn how to balance multiple identities along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In one of the movie’s most compelling scenes, the Puerto Rican actor Ismael Cruz Córdova (seen in the 2018 film “Mary Queen of Scots” and the television show “Berlin Station”) plays the drug cartel leader Lino and shares with Rodriguez’s character Gloria an intimate moment about struggling with his identity in Mexico and the United States — he is too American to be Mexican, and too Mexican to be American. For Córdova, this tension also shapes who he is off camera.

source: nbcnews.com