But 2021 was largely a year of fresh starts for the 40-year-old actress.
A self-anointed “Disney adult”— her bachelorette party was held at Disneyland — Beatriz felt overjoyed when she was cast to voice Mirabel, the Latina heroine in the studio’s 60th animated feature “Encanto,” set in Colombia.
By phone from London, with her newborn by her side, the actress discussed finding Mirabel’s voice and reminisced about her favorite animated shows growing up.
I feel like an American Latino, meaning that there’s stuff that I cling to that feels specifically American in my Latinidad, which is my love of Selena and of country music, because I grew up in Texas.
And so here I am watching this Latino actor talking about watching another Latino in a play and deciding that that was the moment he realized he wanted to be an artist.
It’s up to her to make sure that her needs are getting taken care of, and with that comes a level of maturity.
I’ve been very lucky in that it has been a big part of what I’ve done and that it was something that I could continue doing over the last two years during this global pandemic.
In their own different ways, both projects address this by saying, children are capable of naming, discussing and moving through very adult emotions, because they’re just human emotions at the end of the day.
But then I was also heavily influenced by “Sailor Moon,” which was on TV early in the morning in Texas.
The film that we made was really strong and John Chu had a beautiful vision for the film, but I absolutely understand why the casting of “In the Heights” gave the Black Latino community an issue.