OVER THE COURSE OF GINA TORRES’ CAREER, SHE’S PLAYED BASICALLY everything. “I would not have gotten this far if I wasn’t game. I’ve played a witch. An assassin.” From The Matrix franchise to Suits to the cult classic Firefly, she’s done it all, and now she can add a Ryan Murphy series to her resume with Fox’s 9-1-1: Lone Star. “There are things that come your way that you just don’t say ‘no’ to.” She plays Tommy Vega, a paramedic forced to return to work because her husband’s restaurant was closed due to coronavirus. “We’re doing this in real-time. We are, for lack of a better phrase, embracing the pandemic, understanding that we’re playing frontline workers.” Important to Torres is her presence in Hollywood as a prominent Afro-Latina actress. “I’m coming forward and being all who I am and never, ever sacrificing one for the other. That was an industry problem.” But she says things are changing, that Hollywood isn’t forcing actors to choose one identity over another. “This is who we are. This is what the spectrum of Latina looks like. That’s super important. We make money. We are viable. We are green.”
AARON RICHTER/CONTOUR FOR PIZZA HUT/GETTY
“This is what the spectrum of Latina looks like. We make money. We are viable. We are green.”