From the video interview it does sound like the creative team wanted a blend of people and we should see that in the dancers and the background characters. It sounds like the hope is to see that in the leads of these stories. Heights has 4 leads and 1 is light skinned Afro Latinx. In my opinion (which obviously should…

“I hope you can acknowledge that we can be happy for the Latinx community that can see themselves represented in this movie AND colorism is a huge issue and we have a long way to go to address it.” Totally agreed, it can be two things! 

On. Broadway. I played Claudius with Hamlet still being white off Broadway. IT’S DIFFERENT. I’m talking about Hollywood. I’m Hollywood, Brad Pitt isn’t producing it, That paper bag test will always pop up when you need funding.

Very well said.

Here’s my take on all this. It’s okay for other people to want to see people that look like them, even if those same people don’t look like YOU. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say LMM probably didn’t see a lot of people who looked like him in media. So when he made some media of his own, he wanted to center it…

I feel like there is a difference between “this movie needs more dark-skinned afro-latinx characters to truly represent the diversity of the latinx experience in Washington Heights” vs “this movie purposely excluded dark-skinned latinx to push an intentional colorist agenda”.

What they don’t want to admit is the actual answer to this question: “ Well.... We wanted the movie actually to be made.”

Okay, I’ll bite. Out of a cast of four leads: 1 lead, or 25% of the main cast, is a dark-skinned black man (Corey Hawkins). He’s not Latinx - but this is still a film where non-light-skinned, black folks are represented. 1 lead, or another 25%, identifies as Afro-Latinx (Leslie Grace), and is Dominican. Yes, she is…