To Hollywood, “Hispanic” or “Latino” are generic terms for a whole class of actors. That’s what the script says when a movie or a TV show calls for someone who speaks Spanish or looks as if he or she can. Producers, directors and casting agents lump Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Chileans and others under one label.
And that’s a mistake, says veteran character actor Tony Plana.
“There’s a palpable difference between a Caribbean or Central American or South American Latino,” says Plana, a veteran of films from “El Norte” to “Lone Star” to “JFK”, and of TV shows such as NBC’s “The West Wing” and Showtime’s “Resurrection Blvd.,” on which he stars. “They don’t know how being from Peru is different from being from Mexico or Cuba or Argentina,” Plana says.
Plana, 48, is from Cuba. He grew up in Miami and Los Angeles, received a college degree and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Unlike many Hispanic actors, Plana has been able to play more than thugs, drug lords and pimps. One reason might be his careful consideration of each character’s origins.
“When I play a Cuban, he’s much different from the Mexican-American character I play on ‘Resurrection Blvd.’ The rudder is different” says Plana. “The Mexican rudder runs deeper in the water.”
“Resurrection Blvd.” allows Plana to show another side of himself and another side of Hispanic culture. For three years, he has played Roberto Santiago, a widowed mechanic and head of a family of striving, overachieving Angelenos, including a med student, a lawyer and a contending boxer. Critics have knocked the show, which airs at 9:30 p.m. Wednesdays, for its “overly earnest attempts to uplift.”
“That’s true, on the surface,” Plana says. “But we humanize the stereotypes. Once you get into the show, it goes much deeper than these cardboard characters you might have thought we were playing.”
