USA TODAY National
NEW YORK — Get ready to hear the name Tonatiuh a whole lot more.
After a decade of supporting roles in TV series such as "Vida" and "Promised Land," the Los Angeles native has delivered one of the year’s most talked-about breakthrough performances in “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (now in theaters), a love letter to movie musicals, as well as Latino and queer resilience.
The importance of amplifying those communities isn’t lost on Tonatiuh (pronounced Toh-nah-tee-yoo), whose Mexican immigrant mother named him after the Aztec sun god.
“In the mythology of Tonatiuh, he's the sun of change,” the actor explains on a recent afternoon. “I love that narrative because I’m like, ‘Well, the reason I'm getting into storytelling is to make an impact. My name's already doing that; the brand is set.’ You just have to convince American audiences to not shy away from it.
"But if they learn Tchaikovsky, they can learn Tonatiuh.”
'Kiss of the Spider Woman' star Tonatiuh has 'felt like an underdog my entire life'
Set in an Argentine prison in 1983, “Spider Woman” follows a genderqueer window dresser named Molina (Tonatiuh), who was arrested for public indecency with a man. Behind bars, Molina forges an unlikely bond with political activist Valentin (Diego Luna), and together, they escape into musical fantasies by imagining Molina's favorite movie star, Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez).
For Tonatiuh, who uses he/they pronouns, it was the “biggest honor” to dance and sing alongside Lopez.
“ ‘Get Right’ was my hype song for so many years,” they recall with a laugh. “Legitimately, I snuck out of the house at 14 to go dancing at a club because it was Jennifer Lopez Night and I needed to shake my a-- to her music. My mom called the cops!”
Portraying Molina was a chance to “showcase the totality of what I have inside.” Tonatiuh underwent “Broadway boot camp” to learn the film’s dizzying choreography, and lost nearly 50 pounds through a combination of fasting and a vegan diet. His aim was to capture the gaunt figure of someone imprisoned for years, and also give the character a “genderless expression,” Tonatiuh, 30, says.
With the movie’s sex scene in particular, “I want people to walk away confused," they say. "I want cisgender, heterosexual people to be like, ‘Is that hot? Am I into that person? Is that a dude? Does it matter?'"
Tonatiuh "had all the colors from his first self-tape," says "Spider Woman" director Bill Condon. "He was effortlessly funny, but it was clear there was pain in there, too." The actor and filmmaker had many conversations about Molina’s identity, specifically how to strike a balance between confidence and vulnerability.
In real life, “I have lot of bite and grit in my personality because that’s how I learned to survive,” they say. “It’s an armor; I'd rather die than let you see my weakness.”
Tonatiuh credits his resilience to the women in his family, who "immigrated into a country where they didn't speak the language. My mother worked at a drive-thru when she first got here and then opened up her own business with my aunt that is still running today. Their tenacity was what got me through, but they do it with joy, too.”
The actor wants to be known as someone 'who can transform'
Unlike Molina, Tonatiuh never had a singular diva whom he idolized growing up. A self-described “emo kid,” he listened to Avril Lavigne and the Dresden Dolls, and was drawn to “big, bold female characters” in “The Golden Girls” and “Arrested Development.”
“I loved dramatic films,” Tonatiuh says. “A 5-year-old has no business watching ‘Titanic’ nonstop, but I was like, ‘This love story is so beautiful!’ ”
They say they were both sensitive and nervy as a teen, and found safety in their high-school drama club because “that’s where the weirdos were.” Yet people predicted that Tonatiuh would one day be a lawyer.
“I was really outspoken, but not for myself,” they remember. “If you beat me up, I was like, ‘Whatever, I don’t care.’ But if you came for my mom or immigrants or queer people, it pissed me off.”
Tonatiuh hails from L.A.’s Boyle Heights neighborhood, an immigrant community where he recalls everyone speaking Spanish. But when his family moved to the waspy West Covina, he tried to “assimilate.”
“I called myself Matt for eight years,” Tonatiuh says. In fourth grade, “a teacher of mine said that my name was impossible to say and to give her something else to call me. But when I was in college, I was like, ‘What am I doing? Who am I making myself palatable for?’ ”
He dropped his last name, Elizarraraz, when he joined the Screen Actors Guild and booked his first gig: an episode of the CW's "Jane the Virgin" in 2016. But even as an adult pursuing acting, they felt pressured to suppress their genderqueer identity.
“I cosplayed as a frat boy in college as best I could,” Tonatiuh says. Later, “a person who worked for me told me that the reason I would never have the career I wanted was because of how I presented to the world. So I deepened my voice and gained 40 pounds of mass, but even then, there was still pigeonholing.”
“Spider Woman,” they say, felt like “I returned to my femininity.”
"Molina healed parts of me," Tonatiuh says, tearing up. “Part of me is still that young kid asking, ‘Why don't people like me? What can I do to entertain you?’ I silenced parts of myself to make myself more commercially viable. But with Molina, it was almost like saying ‘I’m sorry’ to my younger self for putting them away for so long."
Tonatiuh is now developing a TV series and eyeing a potential Broadway play. The mission, he says, is to spread empathy through storytelling: "I want to create an entire universe. I want to write children's books; make an album; play a villain like the Joker or the Penguin."
Whatever comes next, "it’s really exciting to know that if this is the last job I ever do, what a hell of a ride it was.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tonatiuh 'silenced' himself to make it in Hollywood. Then came 'Kiss of the Spider Woman.'
Reporting by Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
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