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- Overview
- America Ferrera in ‘Barbie’
- ‘Blue Beetle’: The first Latino superhero lead
- ‘Flamin’ Hot’: Eva Longoria’s feature directorial debut
- Eugenio Derbez in ‘Radical’
- Gael García Bernal in ‘Cassandro’
- Bad Bunny hosts ‘SNL’
- Pedro Pascal in ‘The Last of Us’
- Selena Gomez in ‘Only Murders in the Building’
With the year’s end fast approaching, many may have forgotten some of the best 2023 moments featuring outstanding Latinos in film, television and music.
From moving film and TV performances from America Ferrera and Pedro Pascal to Shakira’s record-breaking pop diss track and Peso Pluma’s popular corridos — and Bad Bunny delivering memorable turns in all three categories — these moments and more brought joy and Latino pride to us all.
The Honduran American actress delivered one of the most memorable speeches from this year’s biggest blockbuster.
Ferrera’s “Barbie” monologue rang true to millions of women watching her run through a series of contradictory demands that reflect the impossible expectations society places on women. Her words went viral on social media as users reposted clips of the speech and shared the speech’s text.
“Barbie” director Greta Gerwig recently told Variety she always envisioned Ferrera in the role of Gloria, the character who explains to the Barbies the contradictions of womanhood. Gerwig said Ferrera took the words from the script and “made the speech her own.”
“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough,” Gloria tells the Barbies. “Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.”
DC Comics released the first live-action superhero feature film with a Latino lead.
In “Blue Beetle,” the star of the film was not just superhero Jaime Reyes, played by Xolo Maridueña, it was also his Mexican American family. The ensemble included comedic actor George Lopez, Belissa Escobedo, Damián Alcazar, Adriana Barraza and Elpidia Carrillo.
The movie was released during the Hollywood writers and actors strikes, preventing its all-Latino cast from promoting the project.
Ahead of the movie’s opening, director Ángel Manuel Soto rallied DC fans and Latino moviegoers in support of the film.
“By embracing who we truly are, maybe we can find our superpower,” Soto told NBC News. “And maybe we can find our own freedom.”
Visually, the film is undeniably Latino since it mixes distinct landscapes from predominantly Hispanic places like Puerto Rico, Miami and El Paso.
In 2019, Longoria sought to direct “Flamin’ Hot,” a feel-good film based on the life of Richard Montañez, a Mexican American janitor turned Frito-Lay executive.
Based on Montañez’s memoir “A Boy, a Burrito, and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive,” the movie details his humble beginnings from growing up in a migrant labor camp in Southern California to eventually pitching an idea to former PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico to attract the Hispanic market by putting spicy chili on Cheetos chips.
Following its direct-to-streaming release on June 9, “Flamin’ Hot” became the most watched streaming premiere ever for Searchlight Pictures, the production company behind the film.
The movie won a few Imagen Awards, which recognize the positive portrayal of Latinos in the entertainment industry, including Best Feature Film and Best Director.
“We had a chance to create a hero in showing Richard Montañez’s story,” Longoria said during her acceptance speech at the Imagen Awards earlier this month. “It was such an honor to direct ‘Flamin’ Hot.’”
The film’s release also reignited a debate over the origin story behind the popular hot Cheetos snack. The controversy first arose in 2021 after a Los Angeles Times investigation concluded that Montañez worked on creating “Flamin’ Hot” products but didn’t specifically invent “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.”
The Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez starred and produced the film based on real-life elementary school teacher Sergio Juarez. Teaching at a school in a Mexican border town, Juarez’s unconventional teaching methods helped unlock his students’ potential and genius — and the working-class students scored the top math test scores in Mexico.
One of his students, Paloma Noyola Bueno, was even featured on the cover of Wired magazine in 2013 as “The Next Steve Jobs.”
Best known for his roles in Oscar-winning movie “CODA” and the highest-grossing Spanish-language film in the U.S. “Instructions Not Included,” “Radical” marks Derbez’s first leading role in a dramatic film.
Derbez told NBC News that unlike idealistic teachers who establish themselves authoritatively at the front of the class, Juarez treated his students as peers or friends — for example, by taking his desk out of the classroom in one scene “because he doesn’t want to be the authority figure.”
Gael García Bernal delivers a captivating performance as Mexican American lucha libre wrestler Saúl Armendáriz.
Best known for flaunting his flamboyant personality and adopting the name Cassandro as a luchador in the wrestling ring, Armendáriz is shown in this biopic struggling for self-acceptance as a gay man in the face of homophobia, family issues and societal pressures.
García Bernal, who also produced the film, told NBC’s “Today” earlier this month that he thought Armendáriz’s story was “a must-do.”
“I grew up a lot, watching lucha libre and being a big fan of that and also wrestling with my friends and my brother,” García Bernal said. “This was something I imagined doing, but never, before that.”
The film also features an appearance by reggaeton star Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. The rapper plays Felipe, who shares a kiss with García Bernal’s character in the movie.
In addition to acting in the film, Bad Bunny had a busy year providing a few other memorable moments.
On Oct. 21, Bad Bunny didn’t only host “Saturday Night Live” for the first time, he also served as the legendary comedy show’s musical guest, performing his hits “Un Preview” and “Monaco.”
The most memorable sketch of the show was a sequel to a crowd-favorite skit starring Pedro Pascal as an overprotective Latina mother to “SNL” cast member Marcello Hernandez.
The skit features Hernandez’s mother, played by Pascal, and his aunt, played by Bad Bunny.
Much like in the original, the mother and aunt have few nice things to say about Hernández’s new girlfriend. They proceed to roast the girlfriend, mostly in Spanish, with an occasional sassy comment in English, until they agree that Hernandez doesn’t eat enough.
But perhaps the funniest sketch of the night was all in Spanish. It sees Bad Bunny and Hernandez as king and prince of 1500s Spain as well as “SNL” alum Fred Armisen, who is Venezuelan, as a conquistador.
Unimpressed by the turkey — or “chicken with testicles in its face” — and the other so-called treasures the conquistadors brought back from the “New World” while attempting to find a new trade route to China, the king and price poke fun at the explorers for not “just going around it” and continuing their journey to China.
Speaking of Pedro Pascal, the Chilean actor had an amazing year. Not only did he guest-star on “SNL” alongside Bad Bunny, but he also took on hosting duties back in February and starred in Season 2 of the “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian.”
But his portrayal of Joel Miller in the highly successful HBO series “The Last of Us” — an adaptation of the popular video game — is the one performance we can’t stop talking about.
In what some consider to be his “best career performance yet,” Pascal stars as the hardened survivor of a global pandemic that has destroyed most of the world. In the dystopian drama, Pascal’s character seeks brief moments of beauty and human connection amid the apocalyptic reality.
His breathtaking performance earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for outstanding lead actor in a drama series, making Pascal only the second Latino actor ever nominated in that category. Puerto Rican actor Jimmy Smits was the first Latino actor nominated in that category back in the 1990s.
Gomez reprised her role as Mabel Mora for the third season of the true-crime satire “Only Murders in the Building.”
Gomez, who is of Mexican heritage, stars as one of three true-crime-obsessed New York City neighbors who continuously find themselves caught up in murder mysteries.
Her on-point sarcastic humor and her magnetic chemistry with co-stars Steve Martin and Martin Short provide “comedy gold,” as showrunner John Hoffman told The Hollywood Reporter in August.
“The thing we could never have predicted was that comedic alchemy that occurred among the three actors,” Hoffman added.
Read the latest Entertainment News and in-depth analysis from Latin America and Mercosur region.
Dec 15, 2021 · Dec. 15, 2021 6 AM PT. Many Latin artists emerged from the first throes of the pandemic taking bolder risks than ever before in their work — whether fashioning genres anew or confronting...
