It is easy to forget that Gina Rodriguez and the titular character she plays on Jane the Virgin are not the same person, especially when Gina is wearing a fake pregnant belly, a prop so integral to the show that it should get its own credit.
Wandering around set in between scenes and a location change, a costumer approaches Gina, pokes the belly, and asks the actress if she wants to take it off. She doesn't. "I don't have underwear," she says, an explanation that evades me but makes complete sense to the woman asking, who nods and walks away.
Today, the show is filming on location at a church in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, and it looks to be a long night. During the dinner break, Gina and I make our way through the craft services line, where she piles her plate with chicken and veggies, and then grabs a chocolate chip cookie. "I think food is better when it's free," she says as we sit down. "I think this tastes better than any gourmet meal I've ever had." I don't know if I agree with her 100 percent, but the caterer is no slouch.
Gina clearly loves the character that earned the 31-year-old Puerto Rican a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Comedy. However, she is quick to point out that she and Jane differ on a lot of matters, starting with the obvious: "As you can see, I'm a 31-year-old not-virgin in real life and a 23-year-old virgin on the show."
Gina first stepped into the spotlight three years ago, playing a rapper in the indie flick Filly Brown, though she soon discovered said spotlight wasn't quite as bright as she had expected. "I thought I was going to blow up. I was named the It Girl. I thought I was going to be like Jennifer Lawrence. I was like, 'X-Men, where are you at?'" She laughs at her own cockiness. "That didn't happen. So I said, 'OK, well, clearly, life is trying to tell me something else. I'm not ready for this.' And I wasn't. I just was discovering who I was. What I realized was that I was being prepared for something bigger. At the time, I couldn't see that. Now, I look back and I'm like, 'Oh my god, I got you. Like I get it. Thank you.'" She repeats "thank you" five more times.
It is a good thing that she's now ready for it, because her career is in overdrive. She took advantage of a break between seasons to work even more, and spent the in-between months in New Orleans, filming Deepwater Horizon, with Kate Hudson and Mark Wahlberg. But before you feel sorry for her, working is exactly how Gina prefers to spend her time. She refers to her Golden Globe as "just a reminder I need to work my ass off even more." "I don't have any days off," she says, then thinks for a second. "Last week I had a day off, and I spent it with my dogs, someone I really care about, and my godchild. I also had breakfast with my parents. And I try to get boxing in every single day."
Gina is very close to her parents and her two older sisters. Though the family is originally from Chicago, her parents moved to L.A. and now conveniently live right by her favorite brunch spot, the Lazy Daisy, and her middle sister recently moved just a few houses down. "I have very few friends," she says. "I feel like there are five people who know me and who I know in exchange. Our gig is always just like hanging out. And I have my cast ... they are siblings. We feel like we're related by blood. And then I got my dad, who is my best friend and who I kick it with almost every day."
Gina and her father are incredibly close, and she's currently working on a book entitled I Can and I Will: Tools My Daddy Gave Me. She gets teary-eyed when talking about some of the lessons she's learned from him, and smirks when talking about others — namely, how to kick someone's ass.
A professional boxing referee, Genaro Rodriguez introduced all three of his daughters — the eldest an investment banker, the middle a doctor, and the youngest an actress — to boxing. "My middle sister is probably the strongest out of all three of us, and she's 20 pounds lighter than me," Gina says proudly. "She wouldn't want to hurt a fly but could hurt everything." She glances around, and gestures at the grips and PAs hauling cables, moving equipment, and parking trucks. "All these dudes are much bigger than me and much stronger," she says. "And I could probably whoop every single one of their asses." She smiles up at the male makeup artist, who's touching up her cheeks and listening to every word she says. He grimaces back.
Having inner and outer strength, and so much family support, has been Gina's pillar when dealing with the downsides of life in the public eye, like the storm of negativity that she weathered after posting a picture of her People en Español cover on her Instagram. Commenters ripped into her for her "weird" toes, something for which she doesn't blame them ("My toes did look weird — let's be real. And that's OK."), but also for her grammatically incorrect Spanish and thus, her overall Latinoness. That Gina does have a problem with.
"I have been very blessed because I didn't get a lot of negativity my first year in the public," she says. "I got some ridiculousness, but People en Español was a different kind of negativity. I've always watched other celebrities get some real nasty comments and been like, 'Wow, man, that's tough.'" She breaks off a piece of her chocolate chip cookie. "That's a tough feeling because no matter how much money you make, no matter how famous you are, you feel, you hurt, you are insecure, you want to be accepted, you want love, you want success. We all want the same damn things." She pops the cookie into her mouth.
"The pain wasn't about the negative. I can deal with that. I have a pretty freaking strong core. My toes looked weird. I get a little cross-eyed when I take off my glasses. It happens. I'm real," she says. "But enough of this I'm-not-Latino-enough bullshit. Because the truth is that all Latinos don't feel the same about each other. They don't get along the way the world thinks they do, and they don't think they are all the same, just like the world thinks they are. This culture, this country we live in is like, 'Oh, you're Latino. All of you guys go over there.' Then we go over there and we go, 'Well, you're Mexican. You go over there. You're Ecuadorian, you go over there, and you're Puerto Rican. You put your ass over there.'"
She sits back and crosses her arms. "That was eye-opening. That is why I'm working on a documentary about it now and having conversations with Latinos about it a lot more. Because the only way for us to win the game is to figure out how the fuck we're playing it. Unity is needed right now."
It's time for a change of locations, which means Gina has to go and get on a bus. Someone brings her purse and, with that, Gina Rodriguez and her belly waddle off into the sunset to film their next scene.
This article was originally published as "Gina Rodriguez: Taking the Bull by the Horns" in the winter 2015 issue of Cosmo for Latinas.
