Adriana Paz comes from a family fond of sports and with an innate ability to dance. She did not inherit the first skill, but since she can remember, she recalls her father coming down to her level, kneeling to make her dance. To this day, if it’s salsa or a ballroom dance, people sit to watch them dance. “We do put on a show,” she says cheerfully. There was never an actor or actress among her family to guide her on her future path.
When it was time to “take things seriously” in high school and make decisions about what she wanted to do with her life, her heart gave her the answer instantly. Paz recalls studying at the College of Sciences and Humanities, Plantel Oriente. On a wall, they posted all the degrees they could aspire to at UNAM. Architecture. Biology. “None of those excited me,” she remembers. Until she read Dramatic Arts and Theater. “There my heart jumped. Here I want to go to school. That’s when my heart was racing, my body vibrated. As it was a degree, my family would take it seriously and support me,” she reminisces.
She did not make a mistake in her choice. At the latest edition of the Cannes Film Festival in France — one of the most important and prestigious in the film circle — the 44-year-old actress, born in the capital, became the first Mexican actress to receive the Best Actress award for her role in the film Emilia Pérez, which will soon continue its cinematic journey at the Toronto and Telluride festivals. With over 50 productions under her belt, including film and television, Paz has been selected this year, along with her colleagues Marina Stavenhagen and Claudia Ramírez, by the Guanajuato International Film Festival (GIFF) to be recognized for the work of women who have fought for visibility and recognition, away from violence frameworks and with the construction of sisterhood environments ahead.
On the occasion of her recognition at GIFF, the actress spoke on the phone about the project that earned her the award in France, her career, and the challenges of motherhood.
Paz is still surprised by the path she has traveled in acting, coming from parents who liked basketball and had a computer store. She never took dance or acting classes, nor did she have a history of artistic origins.
However, she does remember enjoying telling stories. When there were family parties at her parents’ house, through a window, simulating a stage, she would set up theatrical pieces, assigning roles to her cousins and friends. Or, also, when she went to the movies and liked a scene, she would recreate it in front of the mirror and would cry when getting into character, but she wasn’t sure if that world was truly hers considering the phrase that any performer has been told once or many times: “How are you going to be an actress? Artists starve.”
At the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, where she graduated in 2003, she learned to dream, to believe, to not give up, to persevere, and to follow that instinct that led her to bet on acting, that “goosebumps” — when the skin tingles — every time a project was enticing or in the face of an experience that pushed her to demand more of herself or take her out of her comfort zone. That personal and professional philosophy led her to become a three-time Ariel award winner for her performances in La tirisia (2015), Hilda (2016), and La caridad (2017). She was also nominated for the Goya Award in 2017 for her performance in the film El Autor. As well as playing Altagracia in the third and fourth seasons of the series Vis a vis, one of her most famous and popular roles.
In Emilia Pérez, tentatively scheduled for release in Mexico in the last quarter of 2024, Paz shares the cast with Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón, Dominican Zoe Saldaña, and American Selena Gomez, with whom she received the Best Actress recognition at Cannes. The film by director Jacques Audiard, a co-production between Mexico and France, also won the Jury Prize.
Overqualified and overexploited, Rita (Saldaña) uses her talents as a lawyer for a major firm more inclined to whitewash criminals than to pursue justice. But an unexpected door opens for her, helping cartel leader Manitas (Gascón) leave the business and carry out the plan he has been secretly perfecting for years: to finally become the woman she always dreamed of being, according to the synopsis.
In Emilia Pérez, Paz plays the girlfriend of gangster Manitas. Audiard makes the leap from the white and black towers of the Parisian neighborhood in Las Olimpiadas (2021) to the metropolis of Mexico City for his new movie filmed in Spanish and partially in English. The filmmaker immersed himself in the ultra-violent world of Mexican drug traffickers with a Latino-Spanish cast.
“The production team was incredible. The set they built in Paris, I was truly amazed when I entered the soundstages and said: ‘This is a flea market in Mexico’. Jacques is a gentleman who must be in his 70s by now, but he is full of energy and life. He’s super young at heart. He likes to experiment, to take risks. Even though he had done it before, talking about a country that was not his own was a big risk, but that doesn’t stop him. He was in Mexico, absorbing its food, its music. He’s also very observant, an artist who is very attentive to details, who knows how to read the human being and their emotions very well,” she states.
Emilia Pérez, categorized as a narco-musical, joins other recent productions, both television and film, which reflect an issue that has become normalized and entrenched in Mexican society for over a decade: violence due to drug trafficking. Considering the genre in which it is addressed, what portrait does the movie paint about this situation? “It’s a film that speaks of love and humanity. It’s beyond the genre. It’s complicated. More than talking about violence, it talks about the people who suffer that violence and how differently it affects them,” she explains.
“It’s kind of a story of redemption and the search for essence. Of regret, of awareness, because I believe many people who end up within this wave of violence are not even conscious of what they saw and end up there because they have no choice. We all live it, and there are some who glorify it, others who criticize it; I mean, we have to talk about that,” the actress clarifies.
Paz is aware that it is a risky bet, but she defends Audiard’s vision for the meticulousness of his staging, saying how music, dance, and choreography can permeate the audience, distancing and overwhelming them at the same time. “The images hit like a blow, and at the same time, we understand the pain caused by what is happening in Mexico; you feel it in the music,” she complements.
Before embarking on her journey to Paris, Paz prepared with Juan Pablo Villa, who was her vocal coach. However, it was Camille, a French singer and songwriter who was also in charge of the original soundtrack, who ultimately trained and demanded more from her. Aside from the acting aspect, she needed to pay attention to elements like intonation and tuning because all the musical pieces were sung live. “In the musical, interpretive part, I was fascinated. I felt like a child playing and learning everything that was happening to me,” she recalls.
Despite the success of Emilia Pérez at Cannes, the film and one of its protagonists, Karla Sofía Gascón, have been victims of sexist and transphobic attacks from ultraconservative groups in Spain and France. With her performance in the film, Gascón became the first transgender woman to receive the award at the festival on the Côte d’Azur. But she also faced an avalanche of complaints from women’s groups that accuse the transgender community of taking opportunities from them. Paz considers that her co-star was the right person to portray Emilia and Manitas, and that “there’s space for everyone.”
“Women have been sidelined for a long time. We are beginning to take our place, but I think sidelining others who are also seeking theirs doesn’t benefit us. I don’t think Karla took anyone’s place; she earned it with her work when she auditioned and won the award for her performance,” she opines.
Throughout her career, Paz has had to balance motherhood with her dedication to work. Something she has always sought to convey to her 10-year-old son, teaching him that “it’s worth it to work and fight for what you want, believe in, and consider important.” A reward for all the separations between them was during the presentation of Emilia Pérez, when Paz and the production team received a nine-minute ovation after the screening. A post on the actress’s Instagram account showed her son’s hand pointing at the television, where Paz was seen emotional, with teary eyes, and him recognizing her and saying “mom.”
“It’s something that touches me deeply because being a mother and being able to continue with my dream hasn’t been easy. Surely many people have criticized me, will criticize me, because they think that if you have a child, you have to stay with them. I don’t think so, we also need to keep developing, because I’ve seen many frustrated mothers who are not the best version of themselves and are not the best example for their children and are not the best moms either,” she states somewhat emotionally.
Like her, many mothers have to go to factories, to the office, or be away all day, and it’s tough for everyone, she admits. “Being able to see our children feel proud and understand us is a victory. It’s also being able to teach them what life is. We have to make decisions that won’t be easy, but we have to fight and work for them,” she concludes.
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