‘You Kind of Have to Fight for More Room’: Melissa Barrera Says Diverse Casting Has Net Effect on Productions

Melissa Barrera is alert that her profession has made her thing of a “genre actress” — but while she has nary volition of moving distant from her film roots, she is ever looking to grow her profession horizons. After a starring domiciled successful nan bid “Vida,” Barrera came to theatrical prominence successful 2021’s high-profile “In nan Heights” (a musical) and two “Scream” sequels (decidedly horror) successful 2022 and 2023. She past doubled-down connected scary pinch past year’s well-received “Abigail” and nan indie “Your Monster.”

“I emotion horror. It’s ace fun. And there’s truthful galore awesome scary scripts,” Barrera said connected “The Seeds” podcast, praising scary board arsenic immoderate of nan biggest “risk takers” successful nan industry. But she added that she wanted to “stretch” arsenic an actress. “I besides person ne'er liked putting myself successful a container of immoderate kind, and I cognize that I person a batch of different skills that… I want to showcase, and I want to for illustration play with. So, I consciousness for illustration I would get saturated — I do get saturated easy if I’m doing nan aforesaid point aliases nan aforesaid genre.”

As a Latina actress, Barrera said she has had to activity harder to get considered for definite roles passim her career.

“You benignant of person to conflict for much room,” she explained. “People [are] not needfully looking for group that look for illustration you for a role, but you sewage to benignant of effort and… sound connected nan doorway and beryllium like, ‘Hey, I cognize you’re not looking for me. But like, maybe, would you mind? I’ll conscionable do it, and if you for illustration it, maybe.'”

Barrera said that location is simply a nett effect anytime a Latino performer is added to a production’s formed that benefits much than conscionable a azygous actor. She utilized nan casting of nan 5th “Scream” installment arsenic an example. “The large logic that I wanted to get that domiciled truthful severely was because I knew that this characteristic was going to person a family, and that if I sewage nan role, past that meant much opportunities for different Latinos successful nan different roles. So that’s benignant of point that you deliberation about,” she explained.

Barrera will adjacent beryllium seen alongside Simu Lui successful nan Peacock bid “The Copenhagen Test,” bringing her into a caller genre: espionage action thriller. A merchandise day has yet to beryllium announced, though a trailer was shown astatine nan NBCU upfronts past month.