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Gina Rodriguez and Penn Badgley were on Variety’s Actors on Actors show, which you can see here on YouTube. It’s quite long so I’m not embedding it. While I still think that Gina is an incredible actress, my opinion of her changed after some comments she made earlier this year about women of color. Her brand of feminism does not extend to women outside her range of experiences, I’ll say that. Gina is up her own butt, and although a lot of famous actresses are like that it’s not an adequate excuse. (She talks around those issues at around 15:30 to 20. I’m not getting into all that. She absolutely has not changed.)

They talked about Gina’s show, Jane the Virgin, ending and how Penn could relate, because he was on Gossip Girl. He also discussed his role on You, and how different it was to be on Netflix now after the show started on Lifetime. (If you haven’t seen You yet, watch it! He plays a psycho, it’s amazing.) Gina is Gina, but Penn is fascinating to me. He’s clearly thought a lot about these issues. So has Gina, insomuch as they affect her. I’m quoting Penn here, obviously.

On the tagline for You, ‘how far are you willing to go for love’ and how that is inaccurate
To me it’s about ‘how far are we willing to go to forgive an evil white man…’ The cultural norms that we’re still all indoctrinated by that incline us to forgive a certain kind of person who looks like myself…

Now that we’re more conscious of representation… I’m not interested the way I used to be in being likable.

Gina: What’s up with your crazy eyes?
Isn’t that acting? You’re asking me how I make my facial expressions. I don’t find it difficult to access what people define as creepiness or even rage.

On people thirst-tweeting him about his character Joe
I had this measured response, ‘let’s check ourselves a little.’ I was really pleased and surprised to see how much that elevated the conversation around it and encouraged people to have a deeper viewing of the show.

His acronym for fame
It’s f’ing awful man, extremely

Gina: it’s that bizarre space between blessing and burden
Like dancing on a razor’s edge.

Gina: The thing about fame is you just can’t believe the shit that you’re given
Yeah it’s like a constant test of the ego. When you falter it’s very public. You just have no idea what you’re signing up for.

[From Variety video via US Magazine]

Penn revealed that he had an equivalency degree because he stopped school to work, which was surprising to me. He’s so smart and sounds quite educated, which of course doesn’t depend on formal education. As opposed to Gina he really came across as trying to understand the world beyond his own experiences. His thoughts on fame kind of explain his career. He wasn’t chasing that, he was trying to hone his craft and learn how he fit into the world. This makes me want a second season of You already. It’s been announced but there’s no release date yet.

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