Gina Torres On Bringing Her Cuban Heritage to Broadway in ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ (Interview)

For Gina Torres, returning to Broadway in Buena Vista Social Club means stepping into a story that feels like home. Today, October 13, Torres begins her run as legendary Cuban singer Omara Portuondo and will perform through November 29. She’s stepping in while Tony Award winner Natalie Venetia Belcon takes a planned leave of absence to perform in In the Heights at New York City Center. Torres made her Broadway debut in 1994, long before becoming widely known for her television roles in Suits and Firefly. Now, she returns in a production that reflects her Cuban American experience and her pride in being Cubana and Afro-Latina.

That connection adds emotional weight to her return, especially now, when Cuban stories that reflect the community’s history, culture, resilience, and joy are needed.

When Torres first saw Buena Vista Social Club, she immediately recognized something familiar.

“It was home. It felt like home. It was familiar,” she tells HipLatina. “It was the story of my family in a lot of ways. And that’s not something that I have gotten to experience very often at all, not just as an Afro-Cubana in the world, but as an actress, seeing that kind of representation and being part of it.”

Now, as Portuondo, one of Cuban music’s most influential figures, Torres gets to introduce the singer’s legacy to a new generation of theatergoers. She says part of what makes the opportunity so special is that Portuondo’s contributions deserve wider recognition.

“What’s wonderful about telling Omara’s story is, unlike Celia Cruz. I mean, Celia’ss made it to the quarter. There’s a quarter with Celia on it, right?” Torres says. “Everybody knows Celia, but not everybody knows Omara and the impact that she had in terms of the music, in terms of Cuban music specifically.”

Portuondo gained greater international recognition following the success of the 1997 Buena Vista Social Club album and the 1999 documentary, which introduced audiences worldwide to the musicians behind the music. Torres points to a pivotal line in the stage production in which Cuban guitarist and singer Compay Segundo reflects on the divide between those who stayed in Cuba and those who left. She explains that this separation shaped which artists and stories reached the rest of the world.

“And who knows what we all would have known of her, what her life would have become, what our relationship to her might have been if she had been one of the ones that left,” Torres says. “But fortunately, we have her voice, we still have her presence, and we get this beautiful vehicle to be able to share her now with the world and anybody who comes to Broadway at this moment in time, or maybe gets to revisit the documentary.”

For Torres, the music’s pull goes beyond any one song or memory. Preparing for the role has brought her back to the rhythms she grew up with—sounds that have long connected her to her family and culture.

“Really, it’s just the sounds. I couldn’t even point to a specific song. It’s the sounds. It’s the way the piano drops in, it’s the way the conga drops in, the sound of timbales, the guitar,” she says. “It really is more than just a lyric. It’s something that surrounds you that you can’t even put your finger on that feels like air.”

That familiarity also shapes how Torres understands Portuondo’s story. While the musical acknowledges the difficult circumstances of life in Cuba, she believes its most powerful message lies elsewhere. Rather than focusing on hardship alone, she sees a story about art’s ability to sustain people through it.

“The purpose of theater and the play is in light of everything that happens—and spoiler alert: the situation in Cuba, which became very difficult and, in many ways, untenable. But that’s not what this story is,” she says. “We’re so used to seeing that story. [But] this is a story of triumph. This is a story of how loving something brings you through. It’s survival. She’s a survivor. She’s a strong woman who believed in her art and that her art was at the center of her life and her survival. And that’s how she chose to live it.”

Torres hopes that message resonates with audiences of all cultural backgrounds. To her, powerful storytelling allows people to recognize themselves in experiences that may initially seem unfamiliar. For Cuban and Latine audiences in particular, she hopes the production offers something more personal: the feeling of being recognized and celebrated.

“I think good storytelling is blind to race and color and economic disparity. And a good story is a human story,” she says. “That’s what I expect people who don’t share the culture to come away with. I hope they come away having spent time with people, with other human beings who have had heartbreak, who have fallen in love, and who see themselves in those stories. For the culture, para mi gente, for the Cubans and Latinos that come in there, I want them to feel loved up. I want them to feel seen. I want them to feel heard. I want them to feel cherished.”

Torres is also returning to a medium that offers a different kind of creative fulfillment than television and film. In theater, she explains, an actor can inhabit a story from beginning to end, relying on their craft and fellow performers to sustain the experience in real time.

“Theater is an actor’s. It’s the actor’s medium. Television and film, it’s primarily the writers and the directors driving it,” she says. “That’s not to say that the writers and the directors aren’t an important part of theater. Of course they are. It’s an incredibly collaborative thing where everybody is important. The difference is in theater, you start at the beginning, and you’re not interrupted until you get all the way to the end. And it is in that in-between time where you are really relying on yourself, your craft, your skillset, and your scene partners and the people that you’re with.”

For those 90 minutes to two hours, she explains, the cast engages in a kind of dance that demands an actor’s full presence.

“And it’s beautiful. And it requires everything. It requires the entirety of self, and you’re giving it,” she says. “You’re giving all of yourself in that timeframe—in that period. And that’s wonderful.”

With Buena Vista Social Club, Torres brings that full commitment to a production that reflects her heritage and celebrates an artist whose influence deserves greater recognition. It’s a chance to honor the music that has always felt like home—and invite audiences to share in that feeling.