By Samantha Spencer

Nuyorican actress Wanda De Jesus, and Dominicano Manny Perez talk with us about their roles as Millie and Wilson De Leon in the upcoming action thriller Illegal Tender.  The film is the first collaboration between writer/director Franc. Reyes (Empire), and producer John Singleton (Hustle & Flow, Four Brothers) and features an all Latino cast.  Wanda and Manny share some of their thoughts on what this innovative film means to Latinos and American entertainment as a whole.  They can both be seen again in Reyes’ next feature, The Ministers alongside John Leguizamo (Empire, The Kill Point) and Harvey Keitel (Resevoir Dogs, National Treasure).

How important was this film for you artistically? 

Wanda: Franc. leaves room in his scripts to see the potentiality and all the textures, and I was allowed the opportunity to have conversations with the director on how to ground this character. This venture could have easily been a hip, slick and cool number about exploitation, violence and drugs or what have you, but I truly understood that he wrote a texturized piece.  New York City (my home town) is a microcosm of the world where there are different kinds of people that live in that world, not just one sensibility.  So, I said listen, I’d like to ground this women in her education, in her integrity, and the stakes, make them really high.  Let’s not skate over the stakes, not let it be hip, slick and cool. Let it be a journey like John Cassavetes, Gena Rowland’s Gloria. That’s how I’d like to approach it in that it’s a real journey.  If they can buy the stakes and the relationship between mother and son, because there is some implausibility in it, but it’s a movie.  We can make it plausible in certain ways.  So it became really important to me because it was written buy Franc. Reyes who I think is an interesting cat, and if he continues down his track, he can become…he reminds me, his themes are like Martin Scorsese themes.  Underbellied, New York, all these characters, so that excited me to no end.  It became important to me.  Puerto Riqueño al fin.

How did you approach the role of Millie De Leon?

Wanda: Thematically for me, the way I approached this story, is that it’s about stains.  She says so in the film.  Everyone, although they may not want to look at it, has some stain in their history. It’s about living in the question of what am I really prepared to do to protect those that I love.  It’s about keeper of the flame of the dream that her husband had even though it was a bad business choice, economic choice of jumping onto the cocaine money train of the eighties, which the country was doing.  He was the middle guy and he paid the price for it.  Now they’re an upstanding, upper middle class family moving on.  Not unlike the Kennedy’s from bootlegging days. Joseph did what he had to do to move John forward. They’re peaceful, but the stains of the past come to haunt their present.  And she lives a dichotomous life, because on the surface, she’s a woman, a full on mother, but underlying is that unrest of someone who has to live in survivor mode, ever-vigilant. That’s the reason for her proficiency with a gun, not unlike any good American that goes to the shooting range, I think that’s what mom did.  I don’t think she ever wanted the fight to come to her, but like a true intelligent woman, knowing that she cannot always keep ahead of the bad guys, it’s going to catch up one day, and it does. 

How do you feel women were portrayed in this film?

Wanda: Women in this film were used in different ways and for different reasons.  Some were grounded, others were for eye candy, you know how it was used, and we’re all cognizant of that.  You want to get the demographic in, you want to get them to see the film, but at the same time you want to give them something real.  This is about the strong Latina woman, beyond the mother.

When you read the script and saw your Wilson De Leon’s demise, was there something you wanted to reach for to keep him grounded?

Manny: What I love about this character is his heart.  When I prepared for it, I thought, my dad is exactly like this man.  My dad stood a certain stance, he looked you in the eye, he looked right through you, much respect, there was always respect.  This character has that, the way he walks into of the bodega, there’s a lot of respect.  And also, what he does is that he just needs to get bread on the table, that’s it.  My dad needed to put bread on the table, tonight; so he does what he has to do.  I feel like it’s justified, it’s truly justified and that’s the beauty of the character.  It’s like he’s the guy where you ask, “do I love him, or do I hate him?” that’s what makes him human.  He’s not perfect, and that’s the beauty of the guy, it’s hard because, he’s doing something that you’re not sure about.  It was the human side of the character that I truly loved, and made sure that every moment was true to that, to what my father would do. 

TV seems more and more diversified these days, in terms of Latino actors and different programming by and for Latinos.  Do you feel that film is starting to catch up?

Wanda: I think there is a dearth of product, and it’s not just the urban Latino experience, that needs to be told.  There are a lot of stories and directors of different ilks.  There’s Latino talent like crazy, that film needs to catch up a little bit.  But the luxury of film is that you don’t have to stay within the comfortable parameters of television, you can really explore and go as far as you need to go to tell a story.

Manny: I also think that what happened last year at the awards ceremonies and the Oscars, all these Latin directors being honored, I feel like it’s our turn.  I feel like now, with Franc. Reyes, like in the seventies we had the Brian De Palma’s and the Scorsese’s, and all the Italians rising up.  I feel like now is our turn.  And we’re moving up now.  What’s so great about this film is the combination of an African American and a Puerto Rican American, combined, to do this.  It’s the first time I think, at least the first time in my career that I know of an African American and a Puerto Rican American combined to do a project like this.

Wanda: To expand further on that, all the foreign Latin American films, they’re beautiful, there’s room for them, but for some reason, it seems to be more of a valid Latin experience for some Americans. There is room for American Latin stories, and it’s not all urban, so I think that’s what’s exciting too. Franc. is that kind of writer, Americana.  If people are opposed to violence, we, Americans, live in a violent culture.

It seems like we always see the same faces in Hollywood, is it difficult to find other Latino/a leading men/ladies?

Wanda: They are out there.  And that’s what Franc. and John have the courage to do, and the luxury of doing. They went outside the studio system, believed in their story, and got the best actors that they could.

Manny:  Fresh faces too.  I was so thrilled to work with Wanda.  I’ve admired this woman’s work for the longest time, so to work with somebody like this is tremendous. Everyone in the cast is like friends of mine that I grew up with in the career with and it’s so refreshing to me. 

Wanda:  It’s not unlike Scorsese, like when he started and the community of actors that all knew each other.  It’s all a community of actors that are professionals and have been working, know their craft, and have gotten an opportunity through Franc. to just keep on doing what they do. 

Outside of this growing community of Americans with a Latin roots, are people really going to relate to this film?

Wanda: They do screenings and of course they do sample audiences and, I’ve heard from Mr. Singleton himself that people stay for Q&A, and this one African American woman said “and by the way they were Latino”.  She went through the whole film experience not even looking at the cultural differences, if you will, because the tone of the film is such that nobody wears the culture on their sleeve.  It just is, we’re just people.  We speak a certain way, I mean we’re American.  The son speaks that sound of the hip hop generation, the mother’s educated.   I made a conscious decision, because I could’ve sounded like I was from the Bronx, whatever that means, but then that’s a certain kind of Bronx person.   We all sound different, so we all spoke as we speak, so it became a sample of America, and a sample of different flavors and sounds.  It wasn’t specific to one culture, and I hope we all did our work, in specifying the moments, so that when you take the ride,  you’re not looking at the culture, you’re looking at human beings going through high stakes.

I love that the story connects back to Puerto Rico, because aside from brining the characters/story back to their roots, it contrasts the cultures, so you can see that they were far removed from the cliché.

Wanda: Wasn’t that interesting, that the bad guy, when he spoke, it wasn’t what you thought you might have heard on the island, but that is what you hear.  I go back there a lot, my folks live there and so what you get is people that sound like Javier Cordero, that speak good English and you get full Spanish.  What I loved about Illegal Tender is that the transition from New York to Puerto Rico was pretty seamless.  I felt, the only difference was the palm trees. You come from New York and you go Puerto Rico, you hear a guy with a slight accent, but then you go into the nightlife, you go into the people, you look at Tego Calderon, and there’s the same kind of feel.  It’s not that different and the fact that it can go into bilingualism, from English to Spanish and subtitles and back and forth.

Manny:  To me Spanglish is like a new language. It’s like a new language of the kids and teenagers.  It’s truly part of the experience.  It’s so acceptable now, and people understand.