Yalitza Aparicio: “Growing Up I Never Saw Anyone Who Looked Like Me On the Screen”
Yalitza Aparicio has the wide-eyed wonder of a young woman who knows something incredible is happening to her
Photo: Instagram/yalitzaapariciomtz
Yalitza Aparicio has the wide-eyed wonder of a young woman who knows something incredible is happening to her. She’s surprised and amused all at once, and when she explains how she came to star in Roma, celebrated Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron‘s much-lauded black and white drama, it all makes sense.
“I wasn’t really sure of who he was. Of course, I looked him up and saw that he was sort of a big deal, he’d won the Oscar so I figured he was pretty important,” she says with a sly smile. The truth of the matter was that for her and her community in Oaxaca, the Oscar winner didn’t make much of a difference in their day-to-day lives, so he wasn’t someone they gave much thought to.
As a matter of fact, it took the casting director quite a lot of effort to convince Aparicio’s family to let her go to Mexico City for screen tests after Cuaron had settled on her. It wasn’t until it was suggested that Aparicio take her mother along for the initial trip that her family finally relaxed and agreed to let her take the trip.
“My father is so embarrassed now. He refuses to see the casting director again because he gave her such a hard time. She showed us her passport, her bank accounts, so many official government documents,” Aparicio recalled.
Her family’s reluctance to let their daughter go with outsiders shouldn’t be that shocking. Over the last decade, the rates of femicide and human trafficking have skyrocketed alongside the violence related to the drug cartels in Mexico and Oaxaca has been no exception. According to the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women, the state of Oaxaca has a pending request for a gender violence alert.
Even after being flow to D.F., Aparicio still wasn’t 100% convinced that she had actually won a role in the film and shared a hilarious story about when she and her mom first met the director. She’d looked Cuaron up and seen photos where he looked short and chubby, so when a tall, thin man walked into the room, she turned to her mom and said, “Thank god you came with me because they were trying to trick us!” Lucky for her, it was indeed the award-winning director and when they met there was an instant connection. Aparicio says Cuaron went out of his way to thank her mother for accompanying her and for allowing her to work in the film and how grateful she was for the way he treated her. It immediately made her feel more at ease.
“Then when we first talked, he asked me what I had been up to lately like we were old friends,” she says. “At our first screen test, he told me to let him know if I felt like anything was off, and if I ever felt like I wasn’t comfortable to let him know.”
Cuaron’s challenges in casting the film have been well documented and he felt a deep sense of responsibility in picking the right person to play the character of Cleo because it was based on his real-life nanny Libo, who he has repeatedly called his “second mother.” In fact, Aparicio met Libo before they started filming and said it helped her to understand the character of Cleo.
Aparicio admits that she had no idea the film was going to change her life. In fact, when she heard that it was going to be shot in black and white, she thought, “Oh well, no one is going to watch it then!” The first notion she got that something special had happened was when the producers told her that she was going to travel to Italy for the Venice Film Festival. After she got her a passport and went on that first trip she saw the positive reception the film received and from then on, everything started to change. Still, the day the Oscar nominations were announced she was completely shocked. Though she has been grateful for all of the positive attention she’s received, she was more concerned with her costar Marina de Tavira getting a nod for Best Supporting Actress than she was with her own nomination.
She was actually walking away from the TV after celebrating de Tavira’s nomination when she heard her name, and her first reaction was just to start sobbing.
Since then, she’s become an icon for indigenous women and is acutely aware of the importance of representation:
“When I was growing up I never saw anyone who looked like me on TV or in movies and thought it was a waste of time to watch. Now kids who felt the same way I did can see someone on the big screen who looks like me and hopefully they realize that they can reach any of their goals. It’s a new model they can follow and it opens up options that they may not have even considered before. For me, that is such an achievement. “
As the first indigenous woman ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and only the second Mexican woman nominated (Salma Hayek received the first nomination for Frida in 2002) Aparicio realizes the new responsibility she now has. Not only has she buttoned up her social media presence and learned to choose her words carefully, but she also wants to encourage others to challenge themselves and do things they may have never thought were possible before.
“I hope more people go after their dreams and know that they can reach them no matter how you look or your socioeconomic status — not only actors but singers, dancers…” Aparicio concludes. “This is a much bigger challenge than just one person, but in the end, the results will be worth it.”
