Ariana DeBose took residence the Display Actors Guild Award for Finest Supporting Actress in a Movement Image for her flip in Steven Spielberg’s West Facet Story on Sunday evening—an accolade that’s serving to to interrupt the glass ceiling for queer Afro Latinas in Hollywood. She is the primary brazenly queer girl of colour to win a person movie Display Actors Guild Award.
“I feel it’s simply indicative that the doorways are opening,” DeBose stated within the SAG Awards press room whereas speaking with the media. “It’s an honor to be seen, it’s an honor to be an Afro-Latina—an brazenly queer girl of colour, a dancer, a singer, and an actor. It’s indicative to me that I can’t be the final, and that’s the necessary half. No matter firsts are hooked up to my identify, they’re immensely particular to me, however I’m centered on the truth that if I’m the primary of something which means I gained’t be the final.”
DeBose, who’s the newest Latina to painting Anita in West Facet Story, additionally honored her predecessors, Rita Moreno and Chita Rivera for paving the way in which.
“The legacy of Anita means an awesome deal to me, for a lot of completely different causes,” she shared. “I’m a Broadway lady at coronary heart. We communicate so continuously about Rita Moreno, as we should always, she’s legendary. However the OG Anita on stage is Chita Rivera, and I’ve seemed as much as Chita for such a very long time. She [paved the] means for me on the stage for me to have the ability to do what I do in that side of the trade. So, to have the ability to be part of the legacy of Anita that features each Chita and Rita—and now Ariana— it’s actually particular to me. And we’re all very various kinds of Latinas, that’s lovely and necessary too. There’s nobody method to be Latina or Hispanic. There are lots of lovely methods. I feel every one in every of us is a testomony to that.”
Up subsequent for DeBose is the Oscar race, the place she is within the run for Finest Supporting Actress for West Facet Story, changing into the primary brazenly queer girl of colour to be nominated for an appearing Oscar.
Watch DeBose backstage on the SAG Awards under.
