John Leguizamo has spent years speaking publicly about the lack of Latino representation in Hollywood. In 2022, he harshly criticized the casting of James Franco to play Fidel Castro in Alina of Cuba, questioning the choice to have a non-Latino actor play the Cuban leader: “I don’t got a prob with Franco but he ain’t Latino!”.
He has also said that during his early years in Hollywood, he felt the options for Latino actors were very limited. In a recent interview, he explained that he often ended up playing characters such as villains or criminals because those were the few opportunities available to a Latino actor.
Now, however, Leguizamo is part of the cast of The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s new film, in which he plays Eumaeus (Eumaeus), a character from Greek tradition and Odysseus’s loyal companion.
The situation has drawn criticism on social media because of the apparent contradiction: if Leguizamo questioned a non-Latino actor playing a Cuban figure, is it different for him to play a Greek character?
But the actor himself has not presented his participation in The Odyssey as an exception to a rule that “every character should be played by someone of the same ethnicity”. On the contrary, he has explained that the role allowed him to escape the stereotypes he had encountered throughout his career. For him, Eumaeus primarily represents loyalty, a value he considers closely tied to his own experience and Latino culture.
Therefore, rather than being proven hypocrisy, the controversy raises a question about the limits of representation in Hollywood: should an actor’s identity determine which characters they can play, or should the only criterion be their ability to bring the character to life?