'Jane The Virgin' breakout star Gina Rodriguez thinks her portrayal as a virgin Latina girl who gets accidentally impregnated in the new CW dramedy her "dream role."
According to Backstage, Rodriguez knew she had to take the role by the time she reached page three of the script.
"To be very honest, I clicked with the writing. It was so easy to memorize," she told TV Fanatic. She couldn't stop gushing about how the writer was "really good" and was delightfully surprised when she found out that Jennie Snyder Urman was, in fact, "white."
Despite not being written by a Latina, the 'Filly Brown' star thought the script was "so authentic!"
She quickly added, "But that also goes to show that you don't need to be of the same ethnicity in order to relate. It's a human story. It's a human story. Jane could be anybody. Jane could be any ethnicity. We would just change the Spanish to English and that would be it."
On the other hand, writer Jennie Snyder Urman knew she found the perfect lead for 'Jane The Virgin' in Gina Rodriguez.
"As I left, she said, 'It can't be that easy,' " Rodriguez told Backstage about her audition. "And when she said it, I almost started crying."
She promptly did her screentests and started waiting for news. She also went through the obligatory freak out stage, trying to stay calm by running to the beach and praying for guidance.
She received the good news right as she finished praying on the Santa Monica beach.
Moreover, Rodriguez revealed that 'Jane The Virgin' is "the job I was praying for, waiting for."
She previously told The Hollywood Reporter that she turned down several roles that she thought wouldn't be a good example to young Latinas. After graduating from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, she dreamed about taking on a role that would be an encouragement to both herself and to other Latinas.
"Now little girls are going to look up and be like, 'There we are in different stories, as the heroes, as the people that win.' Every ethnicity deserves to own that story, because it's a human story," she told Hollywood Reporter in a previous interview.
You can watch 'Jane The Virgin' and Gina Rodriguez every Monday on the CW.
