Aida Rodriguez on Becoming the Architect of Her Own Career (Interview)

Aida Rodriguez has never been particularly interested in staying in her lane. Before she was known as a stand-up comedian, she moved to Los Angeles to become an actress. Before that, she was already a writer. She later wrote, produced, and starred in her own movie, adding producer, director, author, podcast host, live-event creator, and production-company founder to her résumé. But Rodriguez doesn’t see these as separate careers. She sees herself as an artist with multiple ways of expressing herself—and as the architect of her own career.

That distinction matters as Hollywood grows more unpredictable. Rather than waiting for the industry to decide her next role, Rodriguez has spent years creating her own opportunities. Through her production company, Dancing with Raymond, she has developed projects and produced and starred in independent films, most recently Hurricane Seasons, which is scheduled to screen at film festivals this fall. She’s also working on her second hourlong solo stand-up comedy special, following Aida Rodriguez: Fighting Words, which premiered on Max (formerly HBO Max) in November 2021. And she launched The Remix, a live comedy event that brings different creative disciplines together. Her career is more of an ecosystem than a linear path—one built to keep her creating even when the traditional entertainment machine isn’t offering her a place.

“I think artists are no longer allowing the machine to tell them that they can only do one thing,” Rodriguez tells me. “I think it’s more disruption.”

For Rodriguez, not relying on the machine isn’t merely a response to Hollywood gatekeepers. It’s a philosophy she’s followed since arriving in Los Angeles, when a producer told her to stop waiting for the industry to create roles for someone like her and to write the projects she wanted to see herself in. Nearly two decades later, she’s still following that advice—only now, she’s creating entire worlds around herself.

“He said, ‘You’re 5’10. You’re a Puerto Rican woman. They don’t have you in the breakdowns. That’s not something that they’re looking for. So create the roles you want to see,” she tells me.

Rodriguez entered the industry with a creator mindset, uninterested in being an actor for hire or depending on others to write roles for her.

“There’s been an emergence of that in the last decade or so, where we’ve seen the Issa Raes and the Donald Glovers of the world, and it’s just an abundance of them now who have been people of color who have made the decision to create their own stuff,” she says.

Creating her own opportunities has shaped Rodriguez’s career. She has written and produced films, developed her own comedy specials, and directed specials for others, including Ian Lara’s Romantic Comedy and Material Boy. Through Dancing With Raymond, she now has a slate of projects in development and a growing list of partnerships.

“My company has quietly been doing really well. We’ve been in development with Showtime. We’ve been in development with HBO Max. I have a bunch of projects on my slate that I am currently shopping and developing,” she says. “I’ve been able to do some pretty cool things and partnerships with some big entities and production companies. My company has been around—this is our 10th year since 2016.”

Rodriguez stars in and produced Hurricane Seasons, a new indie dramedy from director Nicole Gomez Fisher. Shot in Puerto Rico and New York, the film follows a Brooklyn artist (Rodriguez), her daughter (Alycia Pascual-Peña), and her terminally ill mother (Priscilla Lopez) on a road trip across Puerto Rico, where they uncover long-held family secrets. The cast also includes Elvis Nolasco, Jerry Minor, Justina Machado, and Carlos Ponce. The film will premiere at the 27th annual Newport Beach Film Festival, running October 15–22, 2026.

“I love independent film,” she says. “I think independent film has always been great. It’s always proven what the Hollywood machine says it can’t be.”

Rodriguez’s career challenges the pressure to define artists by a single discipline. She has been an actor, comedian, writer, producer, director, author, and podcast host, but she sees them all as different ways of telling stories. I asked her why the industry remains so invested in putting creative people into one lane.

“Well, I think that the reason why it feels like it’s not on trend anymore is that it was never the decision of the creative to be that way,” she explains. “That is something the industry created. They want to put you in these boxes—in these lanes. Because if you become popular in this lane, it’s profitable for them. But I don’t know if artistic people are just relegated to just one form of expression because art is just a form of expression.”

That creative independence matters as entertainment professionals face fewer opportunities, longer stretches between jobs, and careers that can hinge on someone else’s decision. Building her own projects gives Rodriguez something to pursue even when the traditional Hollywood machine proves unreliable.

“I’ve always known that what I get, I don’t get from people. I have faith in a higher power. It keeps me working, keeps me busy and gives me peace. And peace makes for a good artist,” she says. “I think when you have safety and peace to create and to dedicate yourself to whatever you’re working on, it’s invaluable. If you are trying to write a script but you’re scared that your lights are going to get turned off, it’s a very different ballgame. I think creating my own stuff has always given me peace. It gives me something to work on. It allows me to do what I love to do.”

For the past year, Rodriguez has been quietly developing material for her next one-hour comedy special. I’ve watched it take shape in fragments at performances in New York and New Jersey—not only as a brilliant, disciplined comedian works through new jokes, but as an artist navigates a period of personal evolution and healing. The material reflects her continuing reckoning with who she is, her identity as a Puerto Rican and Dominican woman, and what she wants her work to look like at this stage of her life. She told me she was still finalizing parts of the hour.

“Right now it’s still a work in progress. I don’t know where it will be when it comes out, but I’m excited about this new hour and the direction that I’m going in,” she tells me enthusiastically. “It’s going to be something that people have never seen me do before. I’m very happy about being free enough and feeling comfortable enough to do it.”

Rodriguez has built her career by refusing to wait for permission. Her journey raises a question: What happens when you stop measuring your creative life by the opportunities other people give you?

“There’s no one way to express art and capitalism, and the machine will try to force you to believe that so that you can adhere to their systems of pouring your money into whatever you need to do so that you can get seen,” she says. “But the truth is, especially now more than ever, when we have access to the marketplace, and we can go straight to the public, there’s never been a time when you can create art more, where you can reach people more without the chains of the machine.”