It’s been quite a journey for the cast ofBlue Beetle. From finding out they were going to be in the first-ever Latino-led live-action superhero project to not being able to promote the film due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Now that the strike has come to an end, I had the chance to speak to the titular lead of the film, Xolo Maridueña, to discuss this wild journey of experiencing the highest moments of his career while the film industry was fighting for their future.
Check out the full interview with Xolo Maridueña below:
Although the strike appeared to be a hindrance to the film’s success, it was interesting to see how the themes of the film directly lined up with the demands of the actor’s union. I asked Maridueña why he felt it was important to support the strike.
Maridueña shared, “What I really learned from getting to my first movie is there are so many people that work on this. It’s corporate greed that got us in the place that we’re in. I’m honored to be this part of history. Years from now, I can say I got to be a part of this really big moment in history, and hopefully, we did the right thing. Because I’ve made so many great relationships with the sound engineers and with the costumers and with people all along the way. Those people need to be fed, and they need to have roofs over their heads. For those reasons, it didn’t feel frustrating, but at the same time, no one prepared for that. I was prepared to have the movie go crazy and for it to be the biggest thing in my life. Nobody sat me down and said, this is how to handle it now that none of that’s happening. I gotta say, even with all of that, the greatest thing was getting to sit in the theater next to kids that looked like me when I was 5, 6, 7, and 8, and getting to see them see their families on the screen.”
“We should be given the chance to tell our own stories,” Maridueña responded. “That doesn’t mean giving us the brown budget. Our stories are general market. There’s a lot of reversing that needs to be done. This industry was built to tell us that this is beautiful and this is not, and this is what makes money, and this isn’t, but culture and the way that we’ve passed down ancestry over the generations; you can’t blend those two things in. So once we start getting more people who are making the decisions, more people who are writing and directing the movies, working in the costume department, working in sound, who are representative of those stories that we’re trying to tell, that’s when the change is going to be made. I think that it’s going to be something that the next steps are going to be really important.”
In addition, Maridueña and I discussed what that representation can look like and how to balance the expectations of a Latino audience eager to see themselves on screen.
Be sure to check out Blue Beetle which is available on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD!
