Zoe Saldaña | Unfiltered

You are indirectly encouraged to believe

that being the only female in a group of men,

in a sea of men makes you better

than every woman around you.

And that can get you only so far.

At first, it was Jacques Audiard.

He's a wonderful filmmaker.

After we had endless conversations via Zoom,

because that was my auditioning, it was through Zoom.

What drew me to Rita was whether or not

I felt I experienced her experiences

at a much milder level, of course.

I still familiarized myself with sensations

of feeling overlooked and burned out,

and feeling at times like my environment was suffocating me

because I wasn't living to my fullest potential.

I felt I had never played someone like that,

and I wanted to desperately inhabit that kind of experience.

On a personal level, I had this desire

to reconnect with dance and with music and unconsciously

I also wanted to reconnect with my roots.

I'm a first generation daughter of immigrants.

Spanish is my first language.

The role of Rita was an all-encompassing role for me.

Yeah, I have a family member who's trans

and who's raised us.

He's made us see so much about who he truly is,

and here I was working with this amazing actress

who has had a journey that puts us all to rest

in terms of just how harder she has to work

to get a seat at the table, to just get respect

and visibility to be seen and be respected for who she is.

And she worked so hard.

She gave so much of herself,

and she's so talented, Karla Sofia Gascon.

Never in a million years was I ever expecting it

to have such a profound impact on so many people.

It was incredible.

Karla's a force of nature,

and she was playing two characters that I can only imagine

that maybe at times represented a great deal

of pain for her.

Though people may think that she probably has a lot

in common with the characters that she's playing,

she doesn't feel that way.

She doesn't feel like she has anything in common

with them half of the time.

That's just a testament of how truly talented she is.

She completely transformed and became these two people,

sometimes both in one day, in one day of shooting.

And it was fascinating to see her just walk into set

and just take everything by storm and be so magnificent.

That what the decisions that they make

for their bodies shouldn't be the only reason

why we define them.

They're not defined by that. That belongs to them.

And they have every right to exercise

whatever journey they need to go through to find themselves

and to feel more like themselves.

I wish for people in the trans community to be valued

for their attributes other than their identity.

I wanna normalize seeing people, not just trans people,

people of color, disabled people in all general spaces,

and for us to normalize walking among them naturally.

That was the cherry on top.

Working with Selena Gomez was fascinating.

She's someone that has been through a lot,

has shared so much about herself and her journey

for the sake of helping so many people,

and she's accomplished that.

But what people are going to discover with her character

of Jessi and the work that she put into Jessi

and Emilia Perez is just how truly talented she is,

and how sincerely thoughtful she is about her work,

about her craft.

And she's so talented. It's incredible.

And how someone that has grown up in the spotlight

still remains so grounded, so peaceful,

so outspoken about mental health, but also about art.

Respecting people for their choices is just remarkable.

Sisterhood is vital.

To me, it's one of the basic needs of life.

Like water, like air, like earth.

I need connection with women. I'm one of three sisters.

I grew up in a family of matriarchs.

Who would I be today or ever, if it wasn't for the women

that have carried me on their shoulders.

They teach me how to be a better person every day

by just being great people.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not cavalier when I say this.

It is easy for me to recognize environments of sisterhood,

and I just unconsciously gravitate towards them.

And I remember for so many years,

you are indirectly encouraged to believe

that being the only female in a group of men,

in a sea of men makes you better

than every woman around you.

And that can get you only so far.

But it starts really quickly

to feel like a very lonely place,

because we need to connect.

The same way men need brotherhoods,

women, we need each other to make each other,

to make us stronger.

And we advocate for each other and we celebrate each other.

We make space for each other.

That's exactly what the set of Emilia Perez was like.

What he does is what so many men should be doing

is just giving space, allowing other people,

especially women, to take up their own space

and for that to not intimidate him.

We were encouraged. We were celebrated.

It became a really fun environment to experiment.

And if we failed, we all failed together

and we failed forward.

But when we succeeded at something,

because I guess an emotional beat felt right,

the synchronicity that we all had was palpable.

It was really amazing to work in such an environment

that was so creative and so harmonious.

I'm passionate. It was a lot of passion.

I think it's what made it special.

If this movie would've been just stuck in one genre,

I think it would've been a really heavy topic to digest

and it would've given us,

as an audience, a harder time to connect with it.

The musicality aspect of Emilia was the spoonful of sugar

that helped the medicine go down.

I really have to say that because

otherwise it would've been just a bigger challenge

for Jack to get us to come out and see his story.

I don't think I can answer that question

without getting emotional.

For so many years, I convinced myself that

I didn't need to be seen to be successful

and to sort of own my evolution as an artist.

And the reality is, as an artist, what draws us to art,

what draws us to wanna make art,

it's this desire to connect with people.

Part of that connection is being seen

for what you put out there, for how hard you work.

If I am recognized for this, it would mean so much to me.

It means that this entire time I was kind of like

on a right path if it led me here, and I matter.

And that's really important to sort of have

that little validation of like,

you've been here this entire time, and yes,

what you've been putting in there has definitely been seen.

It has not been overlooked all the time.

And please continue.

So that repurpose is so needed sometimes for an artist.

It's deeply needed actually.

Sometimes it's as superficial as just forcing myself

out of bed and putting on red lipstick.

Doing the contrary of what you may be feeling

if you know that it is going to be better for you

is a form of empowerment.

Another spiritual form of empowerment is just complimenting

and seeing other women for who they truly are

and telling them.

It takes two sentences

to sometimes save someone's day

by just letting them know that

what they're doing is meaningful to you in some way.

Another form of empowerment is saying no

when you need to say no.

When you feel the need to say no,

when something doesn't feel right for you,

respecting and honoring that feeling

and going with it is a strong form of empowerment.