Yalitza Aparicio interview: 'Star of Roma? I thought they were deceiving me'

Newcomer: The 25-year-old was studying to be a teacher when she was cast
Getty Images
Miranda Bryant22 January 2019

Before being cast as the star of Alfonso Cuarón’s groundbreaking film Roma, Yalitza Aparicio’s only acting experience consisted of telling fibs to her mother as a child. “I would say that I was going to go and do some work for my school and I was just having fun with my friends, but my mum is smart so she would always know that I was lying,” she says, laughing.

And yet, despite her inexperience, her intuitive turn in the movie, aided by her extraordinary ability to communicate through the smallest movement of her face, has viewers hanging on her character’s every thought. Cuarón has described her as “the most amazing actress I have ever worked with”.

The autobiographical film, in black and white and with dialogue in Spanish and Mixtec, has already won two Golden Globes, including best director, four Critics’ Choice awards and been nominated for seven Baftas.

It explores the childhood of the Oscar-winning director, growing up amid family crisis and the tense backdrop of early Seventies Mexico City. Aparicio’s performance as Cleo, the family nanny from whose perspective it is told, has attracted widespread acclaim, with some suggesting she could be in contention for an Academy Award.

Sitting at the head of a ridiculously long conference table in a hotel in Manhattan, the 25-year-old from the Mexican state of Oaxaca is poised yet warm. Like Cleo, she drops micro-facial clues to her thoughts as she talks. She’s wearing a long black dress with a silver zip up the front, which she sometimes fiddles with when she talks.

Speaking in Spanish through a translator, she says she only went to the audition to report back to her heavily pregnant sister, who was inquisitive about the casting process. She had no idea who Cuarón — whose 2013 movie Gravity won multiple gongs — was, and she was studying to become a teacher. Cinema and streaming services like Netflix, Roma’s distributor, were definitely not on her radar then, she says. “At a certain point I realised it was a world that I couldn’t aspire to and I was really focused on working and getting some money to be able to pay for my studies to get by.”

She was chosen from more than 3,000 women, but when she was offered the role it prompted “a lot of mixed feelings”. Although she was happy to star in a film and learn about the film-making process she could not understand why she had been chosen. “It was weird to find out that a woman with my profile was going to be in a film. I was not certain, I thought they were deceiving me.”

The reaction from home was one of shock. “People who know me cannot believe that I am here because I am so shy. When they started to hear that there was an actress from Tlaxiaco [her home city] who was making it, they thought it was my sister, so they were a little bit surprised.” Nonetheless, they are happy about her success and have encouraged her.

Despite her early doubts, acting came surprisingly easily. “The first time I met Alfonso he reassured me, he behaved like an old friend and he was always on the set giving us advice, giving us instructions, inspiring confidence, and then I started to befriend other people on the set and they were friendly so I felt very confident.”

Screen debut: Yalitza Aparicio as nanny Cleo in award-winning film Roma, set in Seventies Mexico City
AP

The way it was filmed — in chronological order with scripts withheld from actors, who were fed lines — also made it easier, she says. “It helped not having the script, it helped being surprised. Once they said, ‘Action!’ I started to think like Cleo and I started to react the way she would react.”

The method was used to powerful effect in the scene where her character goes into labour. Cuarón did not tell Aparicio that the baby was to be stillborn, making Cleo’s wordless horror and indigestible pain even more palp-able. “I didn’t know what was going to happen, I didn’t know that the baby was not going to survive, so it was a very strong reaction when I found out that the baby didn’t make it,” she says. “I had totally internalised Cleo waiting for the baby, expecting the baby, and regardless of how the baby was conceived, I was doing what every mother does, expecting the baby, looking forward.”

As well as drawing from her own experience, Aparicio took inspiration from her mother and sister. “My mum has also been a domestic worker. In many cases I went with her to help her go a little bit faster, and other times I also worked as a domestic worker because I was trying to pay for my school, so these experiences fed the character.” She met Liboria “Libo” Rodríguez, Cuarón’s childhood nanny on whom the character is based. “I got an idea of how to react because I saw the love she has for the family.”

Aparicio, who describes herself as an “old-fashioned feminist”, believes conditions for domestic workers in Mexico have not improved since the Seventies, citing low pay and long hours: “This film is a homage to domestic workers — who tend to be very invisible, and people do not realise the significant work they do — and also to mothers in general.”

Roma also comes at a pivotal time in US-Mexico relations as Donald Trump heightens his anti-immigrant rhetoric and threats over his border wall idea. While she declines to comment on the President, she says she sees the film as “an invitation to think about another way and not to make random conclusions about people without seeing who they really are”.

She doesn’t have any other acting projects lined up but seems to be open to more film work. If that doesn’t happen, she’s not averse to going back to teaching. In the meantime she’s making the most of her new platform. Last month she appeared on the cover of Vogue Mexico, which rarely features indigenous women. “People that they [fashion magazines] portray always seem unreachable,” she says. “So seeing a similar face is a way to tell people, ‘Yes, you can do it. You can dream about being on the cover of magazines, you can dream about being in a film.’ So that’s why it was important.”

The biggest films arriving in 2019

1/8

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in