Actors John Leguizamo and Laz Alonso and showrunner Gloria Calderón-Kellett will headline Amazon Studios’ Voices/Voces: An Entertainment Celebration for Hispanic Heritage Month on Sept. 30.
The event will present three panel discussions about identity labels used by nearly 60 million Latinos living in the U.S., content created in the Americas in the two other most-spoken languages–Spanish and Portuguese, and the disproportional representation in Hollywood of what is now the nation’s largest minority group. Primetime Emmy winner Leguizamo (When They See Us, Ice Age franchise) will speak at the “Lightning Talk: Who We Are… Hispanic, Latino, Latiné, Latinx, Afro-Latino, Indigenous, Understanding the breadth and depth of the community.” Alonso (The Boys) and Calderón-Kellett (One Day at a Time) will join “Conversation: The Evolution of Latiné Representation on Screen.” The other panel is titled “Industry Conversation: Content Across Borders.”
The Amazon Studios Latino-focused event is part of the company’s new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policy. Launched this past June, the initiative comes at the time of a persistent push to have equitable representation of people of color and other underrepresented groups in Hollywood, especially since the #OscarSoWhite movement in 2015 protesting the lack of diversity of the Academy Awards. Also, streaming platforms like Amazon seem interested in developing diverse portfolios in search of subscribers both here in the increasingly diverse U.S. market and abroad in a world with a very diverse population.
Amazon’s DEI recently developed an “inclusion playbook” that includes “minimum aspirational goals” for casting across speaking roles in its projects: “30% white men, 30% white women and non-binary people, 20% men from underrepresented races and ethnicities, 20% women and non-binary people from underrepresented races and ethnicities.”
Voices/Voces seem to fit into the streamer’s new diversity efforts by exploring issues of representation.
“The Latiné community is comprised of many rich and dynamic cultures with multilayered stories to tell,” said Latasha Gillespie, global head of DEI for Amazon Studios and the trade site IMDb. “To celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, we’re thrilled to present a Voices/Voces event with an esteemed group of creators, performers and community members from the pan-Latin diaspora.”
Other Voices/Voces participants include a journalist, a politician and four streamer executives. They are Clayton Davis, film awards editor for Variety, and Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro, who is also a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The Amazon Studios execs are Yolanda Guillen, senior executive of casting; Malu Miranda, producer and head of originals Brazil; Javiera Balmaceda, head of local originals, Spanish speaking Latin America; and Lorenza Muñoz, senior global awards.
In addition to serious topics, comedian Gina Brillon will perform a set to close the event.
Voices/Voces is the third program of a series launched by Amazon Studios earlier this year focusing on Hollywood underrepresented communities. The previous two centered on the LGBTQ+ and Asian-American communities.
The Sept. 30 event will stream on Amazon Live and Amazon Studios DEI Twitch.
Featured Photos: John Leguizamo (Credit: Amazon Studios) / Laz Alonso (Credit: Jennifer Cooper)