Why Can’t ‘West Side Story’ Just Cast a Puerto Rican Maria?
When it comes to my identity, I highlight three things about myself above anything else: I’m a woman, I’m Puerto Rican, and I’m a full-fledged theater person. I grew up thinking that everyone, not just my family, ate arroz con gandules (rice and beans) and pernil (pork) at their holiday meals. And I was barely 9 years old when I had my first solo in a Philadelphia community theater production of Annie.
This is why when the casting news came out about Steven Spielberg’s film remake of the West Side Story musical I was ecstatic beyond belief, and then incredibly disappointed. Once again, the actress playing the character of Maria is not Puerto Rican, and I can’t understand why.
Before you grab your pitchforks (or in the context of this piece, your pocket knives and chains) I know the effort that director Spielberg put into getting this film “right,” as he should have. It’s common knowledge that the folks the first time around got the movie very, very wrong. He canvassed students and professors from the University of Puerto Rico to make sure that Puerto Ricans were represented correctly in the movie, even asking what they would like to see added in. He casted Hispanic actors to portray the characters of that ethnicity in the film, which is already way more than original directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins ever did. He also definitely did not want Rita Morena, who is in the remake of the film and the original, forced into wearing brownface this time around. Seriously, that happened. Even Moreno herself, who is Puerto Rican, put her stamp of approval on the film, telling the Chicago Sun Times that Spielberg “corrected all that stuff,“ and that “every Hispanic [character] is actually Hispanic.”