Rodriguez Makes Feature Directorial Debut on Sports Drama
Gina Rodriguez’s breakout role in The CW’s Jane the Virgin came to a close in 2019 after five seasons. This series launched her career and allowed her to expand into executive producing the series and directing three of the episodes.
Most recently, Rodriguez starred in Netflix’s Awake as Jill, a former Army medic who is also a former drug addict trying to get her kids back after a setback. After a devastating global event wipes out all electronics and eliminates people’s ability to sleep, Rodriguez goes on a journey to save her daughter played by Ariana Greenblatt. Critics lauded her performance as “heartfelt” and with “forceful determination” on rogerebert.com. But these days, there are more and more opportunities for work behind the camera, and she is loving it.
In June, Rodriguez was in Hawaii directing an episode of Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. During a recent Collider interview, she talked about her work on Awake and voicing the mom in the Netflix’s hybrid limited series Lost Ollie. When asked about her own producing projects, she inquisitively asked, “Which ones?” It seems she has a few.
First announced in 2018, Carmen Sandiego, which she is producing with Netflix, is still in the queue. She enthusiastically talked about the projects currently on the launchpad through her I Can and I Will Productions company, and her transition into producing.
“I started in front of the camera side. So venturing into [the] producorial space has allowed me to really learn so much about the creative process,” she explained. She talked about the two films she is producing with Netflix, one she is currently filming and the romantic comedy, Players, which is in development. She also explained she has three television shows in all stages of development.
“It’s really fun to birth…to be a part of cultivating and creating something, which is something I didn’t do before, and now I am more in that, and that has been a real shift,” she said contentedly.
This past June, Rodriguez announced another film under production at her I Can and I Will production shingle. She will be starring and producing, as well as making her feature directorial debut on the untitled sports drama, which will also star Ryan Garcia, a professional Mexican boxer and lightweight champ. Rodriguez is all in with this project as she will also co-write the screenplay with actor and playwright Bernardo Cubria (The Giant Void in My Soul). Garcia will play a fictional version of himself as Alex Guerrero, a boxer who struggles with mental health.
Rodriguez is not new to the boxing world. She grew up watching and attending boxing matches with her father, Gino Rodriguez, a former professional boxing referee and will bring that knowledge to the writing.
As for Garcia, he is a boxing star. He began boxing at the age of seven and turned professional at 17. After winning multiple national championships as an amateur and several professional fights in Mexico, Garcia signed with Oscar de la Hoya’s Golden Boy.
Rodriguez has already honed her producing skills on television. She is the executive producer of the comedy-drama, streaming television series created by Ilana Peña, Diary of a Future President, and starring Tess Romero and Selenis Leyva (Orange Is the New Black). The series, in which Rodriguez has a recurring role has been picked up for a second season by Disney +. It will premiere on August 18, 2021.
Gina knew early on while doing Jane the Virgin that she wanted to explore the possibilities beyond acting. And while she expands her talents, she also focuses on bringing a variety of untold stories to the screen, projects that show the multi-faceted side of what it means to be Latino/a in the U.S.
