In the Country We Love

by Diane Guerrero

  Given how awful that first scene went, I had to pry myself out of bed for the following day’s filming. Each episode requires about nine days of shooting; not until day three did I turn a corner and really start to relax. That had a lot to do with meeting Jackie Cruz, who plays Flaca, Maritza’s best friend. We instantly hit it off. She’s so spunky, so fun, so approachable. “Hey, do you want to have lunch?” she asked me that first week. “Sure,” I said. That was the beginning of not just a work camaraderie but a real friendship. I’ll tell you more about that in a sec.

  The cast was huge, and up to this point, I was meeting a new character every half hour. And as shy as I was, meeting Taylor Schilling (who plays Piper) was very cool. She seemed so dedicated. She was tall with a big smile and an infectious laugh that reminded me of my college roomie, Adrienne. She mentioned she was from Boston, and that filled me with pride. Hell yes—three girls from the Bean on a show together in New York! Eat that, whatever town or city hates on Boston.

  My sole focus is playing the hell out of Maritza. “Who is she, really?” I get asked a lot by fans and interviewers. “What’s her story?” Here’s the thing: On a show like Orange, the characters unfold for us actors nearly as slowly as they do for our viewers; the writers only give us the script for the following episode, not for the full season. So I’m still getting to know Maritza myself, and this is what I can tell you about her: She’s a spitfire. She’s got a silly side. She always tries to make the most of her situation. And she’s desperately seeking a family, some security. Sound familiar? And while she’s smart, I don’t think she cares about trying too hard. She’s a girl who’s had to use whatever is available to her, like many others in her situation (I can think of a few girls like that). I think you’ll find that Maritza is a lot more than she seems.

  In Season Four and hopefully beyond, you will see more of who Maritza is, as well as her baggage. I have fun all the time with the different possibilities for her life. In one scenario I’ve played with, Maritza comes from a wealthy white suburban family who adopted her at birth; she has grown up grappling with identity issues. When her mom shows up at Litchfield to see her, she’s like, “Maritza, why are you talking like you’re from the streets dear? What would the gals in the country club say if they heard you speaking that way, after all we’ve done for you?” That storyline, among others, makes me laugh. We’ll see how that jibes with what the writers create. The truth is that this show is so freaking good that there is no doubt that we’ll continue to amaze and grab your attention with all the wonderful stories we bring to life. Real stories about real women. As Lea DeLaria aka Big Boo would say, “Fuck yeah!”

  When I think about the show entering its fourth season, things seem so different than they were in the beginning. My worries have changed. My heart is in a different place. I cannot believe how much I’ve grown throughout this whole experience. I feel like I belong to a family, like I’m part of something bigger. Since the first season, we as a show have broken so many barriers and brought light to so many important issues in need of attention. How many shows can you say have done that? Not only have we changed the way people watch television, we’ve bred a whole crew of activists. How wonderful to be part of such social and political awareness. Dope. We are fighting for women’s rights, LGBT rights, social equality, prison reform—and now I hope my brothers and sisters join me in my fight for immigration reform.

  Maritza’s most memorable line (so far!) is the one I auditioned with. And it’s not just because I’m in the episode—okay yes, it’s because I’m in it, duh!—that it became one of my favorites of the first season. In all seriousness, it was after that episode that I first began noticing that people were recognizing me. I started seeing Internet memes of myself with “Vote for Maritza if you want pizza!” as a caption underneath. I swear, people still randomly come up to me on the streets and yell out that line. I felt ridiculous when I said it (I even cringed when I later watched it), which is why it’s funny and ironic that it turned out to be one of Maritza’s best moments.

  A lot of my scenes are with Jackie, who’s about eighty inches taller than I am (seriously, she stands five feet nine to my five feet two). The directors hadn’t initially planned for our characters to be such close friends. But when they noticed how cool Jackie and I had become in real life, they went with that and altered our story lines. (Or at least, this is the story Jackie and I have planned to tell our grandchildren, so whether I’m fuzzy on the details of how our characters became so close is of no importance.) In Episode Six of Season Two, our on-camera connection suddenly got hotter. When I read that week’s script, it involved a Valentine’s party, some hooch (aka prison moonshine), and a smooch between two besties. It was wicked awkward. I immediately started hyperventilating when I realized Jackie and I would have to kiss. I’d never even done a kissing scene, much less a girl-on-girl one. And since Jackie and I are such great buds off camera, it made it all the weirder.

  For the entire week, I practiced my kissing technique in the mirror; I put my lips right up to the glass, closed my eyes, and then peeked to see how it appeared. In a word? Disturbing. I looked cross-eyed with lips all poked out. I didn’t even want to consider how it would look to other people. When you’re kissing someone in real life, you don’t pay attention to how you look; you’re not supposed to. You’re in the moment. Your face gets ugly. You might even slobber. Jackie and I didn’t talk to each other about any of this in advance; she probably felt just as strange about it as I did. So when we showed up on set that day, we were both nervous.

  “You ready for this?” she asked.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, giggling.

  It’s one thing to simply peck someone on the lips; it’s an entirely different matter to perform a make-out session. In the case of the latter, you get self-conscious. People are watching you. Repositioning you. And talking you through it. “Try to angle yourself to the left, Diane!” the director instructed. By the end of it, I didn’t care whether I was kissing my girlfriend or a hippopotamus. I just wanted the ordeal to be over with.

  And soon enough it was. Flaca (and yes, it helped to keep reminding myself that it was Flaca kissing Maritza, not Jackie kissing Diane) leaned in and planted one on me. Things got heavy, and then we both stopped and went, “Naaaah!” Afterward over lunch, Jackie and I had a laugh about the whole thing and got right back to being what we are to this day—platonic pals.

  Although now and again, she gets a little grabby and I have to splash cold water on her face to get her little paws off me. “You totally want me,” she’ll joke. “OMG Jack, get over yourself—I do not!” I’ll tell her. “Then why are you blushing?” “Uh, because you’re making me blush.” We crack up at the fact that I’m so uncomfortable with people touching me and giving me long hugs. Leave it to your friends to point out your weird hang-ups and quirks. “You’re not touchy-feely are you?” she’ll tease. What, me? Right then, a slew of moments when I’ve gotten stiff in various social encounters will flash through my head. I’ll be your rock and a shoulder for you to cry on, but don’t get too close to my body or I’ll turn stiff as a board. Unless I’m drunk or actively trying to seduce you. Yup, very primal over here. I’m still working on that. My mom says its because I have trust issues, because of my trauma as a kid, blah blah blah.

  Even if we weren’t on a hit show together, I’d hang with Jackie. I can be my goofy self around her. No judgments. In fact, she’s just as silly. We do a lot together off set. We’ve gone to the ballet. We like to try different restaurants. And above all else, we’re black-belt shoppers. After a day of filming, for instance, we always hit up the stores of Soho. From there, we might go get our nails done but not without a few hundred selfies courtesy of selfie queen Cruz. I protest, but I have to say that without her I probably wouldn’t have any accounts of my outings.

  With so much estrogen on the set of Orange, some might think there’d be constant bickering. In fact, it’s empowering and full of free e
xpression—an environment mostly run by women, for women. This is one reason I appreciate Jenji Kohan and the Orange producers so much. Not only has Jenji changed my life, she has inspired me through her leadership. Working on a production like this one has taught me that there’s no limit to what I can do. I can be strong and be a woman at the same time. I know this sounds dated and that the women’s liberation movement already happened, but we still deal with societal pressures that tell us we’re not as strong or as competent as men. Jenji is a constant reminder that that’s not the case. She is a fighter for women and has chosen Piper Kerman’s story—along with the story of millions of women in the prison system—to show how powerful we really are. She’s shining a light on the injustices that we face. We need more women like you Jenji, and I hope to be one of them—someone who’s contributing for a better and more just world in which women are equal to men.

  I’d say the ladies on the cast of Orange are some of the best I’ve ever met in my life. It’s not uncommon to walk by a dressing room and hear laughter or singing or even crying. We’re real people, and we bring our true selves with us to the set. We’re there for each other, and not just the cast, but the whole doggone crew. I’ve never seen a better-run production. We’re hardworking and happy. I feel respected and valued. Being there reminds me of my time at Boston Arts Academy. There’s no filter on what you can say—and I know that my feelings are safe there.

  Even with all the love and warmth on the show, there have still been some tough days for me. For one thing, no one in the cast, including Jackie, knew what had happened in my family. I kept that to myself because I was ashamed of it—and because I didn’t want to think about or discuss it. But how can you refuse to acknowledge something when your whole environment is one big screaming reminder? With just about every script, in almost every corner of the set, I was faced with the truth: This was my parents’ life. My mother had sat in handcuffs; my father had once worn an orange jumpsuit like the dozens that sat folded in our wardrobe department. For the other actors and me on our show, this was all fantasy, the re-creation of a world we knew little about; for Mami and Papi, it could not have been more real or painful.

  I tried to use the experience—to access my raw feelings and channel them into my portrayal—the way I’d been taught to do at Susan Batson. Some days, that worked beautifully; other days, I’d end up upset or numb. I’ve had so many scenes in which Flaca and I are doing the dirty work, like cleaning the kitchen or mopping the floors, which is when I think of my parents most. Long before they ended up in prison, they’d spent years handling the nastiest jobs, the ones often avoided by others. Manual labor. Low pay. No respect. They must’ve felt so trapped. It must’ve been so hard for them to maintain their dignity when others looked down on them or, worse, didn’t see them at all.

  As we wrapped up shooting Season One, the show’s material suddenly hit even closer to home. My brother called me with some news about his daughter—my niece, Erica. The two of us had long since fallen out of touch, and I’d always deeply regretted that. So when Eric told me that she’d gotten caught up with the wrong crowd in high school and had ended up in jail, it broke my heart. A few years earlier, Gloria had apparently realized Erica was headed toward trouble, and she’d done all she could to steer her back on track. But with my brother away in Colombia, and with the struggles that go along with raising a child on one income in a tough neighborhood, Gloria’s efforts weren’t enough to save her beloved daughter from a difficult situation.

  I experienced many emotions when I heard about Erica. Guilt that I hadn’t somehow managed to stay connected with her. Anger that she’d been forced to grow up without the nurturing presence of my parents and the guidance of her father. And sadness that she’d stumbled into a hole she couldn’t pull herself out of. Here I was, experiencing the happiest moment in my career, portraying a woman’s life in a fictitious penitentiary, and my only niece, my own flesh and blood, was living through her lowest point while in an actual prison. That, along with all my parents had survived, made my work on Orange bittersweet. Life can indeed imitate art—and at times, it does so agonizingly well.

  * * *

  During my second season of filming for Orange, I got a call from Josh. “There’s another show we want you to go in for,” he told me. I went into the audition, and two weeks later I got a callback and flew to Los Angeles to test for a role. The series? Jane the Virgin, a comedy-drama to air on the CW. The story is about Jane, a virgin who is mistakenly artificially inseminated and becomes pregnant.

  That trip was my first time in California—and everything was so vast and big. This was a huge deal for me. I couldn’t imagine starting over again in a new place, and I’d always told myself that if I ever went to LA, it would be if I were called there for work. LA was a different animal, and I wanted to be introduced to it formally.

  When I arrived, everything about the city made it different from New York. But I liked the change of pace. And it was beautiful: the nature, the sunsets, the green juice. I could totally do the whole bicoastal thing just fine, I thought. Now I all I have to do is book the job.

  On the day of the audition, I was bright eyed and full of wonder and amazement. I was LA chillin’ fo sho, brah. My theme song even changed from Gypsy’s “Some People” to 311’s “Amber.” The same thing had happened when I first set foot on the CBS lot—my theme song music turned into the one from Jaws … ominous and grand. That was my first time in a Hollywood studio lot, and oh how scary it seemed. I’d never seen anything like it. I felt like a little mouse. This was Hollywood, baby! And why not me? On the afternoon of the audition, I tested and waited patiently to hear if I was going to leave LA with a job or just a great experience, or both! By the time I landed in New York, I had bitten off all of my nails. As soon as I got into the car, my phone rang. It was Jennie Urman, the show’s creator. “We’d like to offer you the role of Lina, Jane’s best friend.”

  “What?” I said.

  “We think you’d be wonderful for that part,” she explained.

  “Really?” I squealed.

  “Yes, really,” she said.

  And just like that, in the space of ten seconds, I’d doubled my number of recurring roles. No, it wasn’t a principal character, but not too shabby for my first time in LA. I got a job and that was huge! More than ever, I was determined to keep working hard and allowing myself to dream big. (Press PLAY for E.T. theme music). Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I, this little mouse, would have a shot in this space. I was humbled and hungry. It’s the only way I’ve learned to tread water in this business.

  We shot the pilot, and what a fantastic experience that was. It was great to be able to play a character so different from Maritza. I had all this great set experience from Orange, and I used that knowledge to keep myself from being awkward on set. I still frequently have to pinch myself that I am on two awesome shows! I love portraying Lina. She’s so cute and feisty. I also love it when young girls come up to me and comment on how they love Jane and Lina’s friendship, #bestfriendgoals. Lina loves Jane and would do anything to protect her. She’s a loyal friend and always down to do whatever! Not to mention that she’s always trying to get Jane to lose her virginity. I mean, that is the ideal girlfriend, right? “C’mon, Jane, just do it already!”

  Another great perk of the sweet new job was getting to know my dear friend Gina Rodriguez. Most of my scenes are with Gina, and she’s not just wonderful as an actor but as a person. She’s a ball of energy. She’s smart and funny. And she really cares about the cast and knows how to bring us together. On many filming days, she’ll gather up all the background actors, stand up on a little podium, and thank them for the work they do. “We couldn’t have done this scene without you,” she has often said. “I mean, we would look pretty stupid at a club with no people in it! Thank you for being here.” Wow, what a gal! We can all learn a thing or two from her, you know. It’s hard not to like and feel connected to someone who’s so gene
rous and open.

  And, of course, it’s good when you get along with the folks at work—and the rest of the cast makes that easy. They are just as beautiful and generous as Gina is. I couldn’t have asked for better. Another thing that makes this show so special is that it’s telling, for the most part, the story of a Latino family. Jane and her family are from Venezuela. The series reflects a lot of what is beautiful about my culture and what it’s like to grow up in America. It shows a family that is connected to its roots, but also grounded and connected to American values and way of life. It shines a light on a generation of families that is rarely portrayed on television. This is huge! And the fact that the show has done so well just proves how high the demand is for this kind of content, as well as shows how large and important our community really is in the United States. Our stories are interwoven in the fabric of this country, and it’s about time we accept it as part of our norm. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate who I am and where I come from. Thanks, Jennie.

  After Jane got fully under way, I took off a weekend to hang with my girls in Atlantic City and celebrate our friend’s birthday. We stayed at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino, and at around ten p.m., we headed down to the hotel’s dance nightclub, Haven. I had no expectations of any sort, other than to get white-girl wasted with my bests! I was on the dance floor doing my hottest shoulder moves when out of nowhere, this guy comes up to me. Handsome. Clean-cut, beautiful chiseled face, and impeccably dressed. It was as if God had drawn his face using one of His finest pencils. And he smelled like heaven. My goodness, what a delicious scent. Who are you? I thought.

  When it comes to two people meeting, the following events will sound clichéd—like a scene right out of your favorite romantic comedy. It was like he and I were the only ones there. No distractions, no noise, just sparkle and glitter. “Hi there, I noticed you from across the room, and I wanted to introduce myself. My name is Hov, OH, H-to-the-O-V.” Just kidding. What he actually said was, “My name is J, and I think you’re very beautiful.”