Should Carey Mulligan Have Played a White Latina in 'Maestro'?

By Alberto Cox Délano | Film | December 21, 2023 |

By Alberto Cox Délano | Film | December 21, 2023 |

Would I be writing this if someone like Ana de la Reguera, Adria Arjona, or Ana de Armas was cast as Felicia Montealegre in Bradley Cooper’s Maestro? Probably not. It wouldn’t be an issue, in this hypothetical, that a Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban woman was playing a Costa Rican-Chilean woman. It’s not like when Hollywood casts any Brown actor in whichever South Asian or Middle Eastern role available, regardless of said actor’s actual origin. We Latines are as diverse as our continent’s geography, but our common experiences and heritage are enough for a talented Latine actor to seamlessly inhabit most Latine characters.

But our case here is that Carey Mulligan ended up portraying Montealegre. At face value, it would seem like blatant whitewashing: We have a very British actress with a very British name playing a person called FE-LI-CIA MON-TE-A-LE-GRE, which might be as Latine as a name can get, all made up of liquid phonemes. Moreover, she was a woman born in Costa Rica and raised in Chile; her childhood was a full tour of the Region! But that very childhood experience breaks down the title question into a spectrum of nuances. Felicia Montealegre was born into the Latin American white elite. This aristocracy is perhaps not as interbred as Europe’s (given the distances). Still, it is not uncommon for some of its members to be multinationals, which is where Montealegre’s heritage and mine connect. Sort of.

See, my grandmother went to school with her. Felicia was five years older, so she “went to school” more in the sense that she was someone my grandmother knew from during recess, but still. Both of them attended the (breathes in) “Colegio del Sagrado Corazón de las Monjas Francesas,” basically the most prestigious girl’s school in Chile at the time; picture the school from Gilmore Girls but for Chile’s elite and also functioning as a monastery. My mother would also graduate from that same school, and a few years later, she attended university at the same campus, which was sold to the Catholic University of Chile, where, much later I would also study and take some courses at that campus. Carey Mulligan visited the place when researching the role:

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This is all to say that I am well acquainted with Felicia Montealegre’s social milieu. But it was my grandmother’s upbringing that more closely resembled Felicia’s. Both were born abroad, my grandmother in Buenos Aires and Felicia in San José, both descendants of aristocratic families in their respective countries. Both were daughters of engineers who moved with their families all over the world for work. Both were raised multilingually and taught in French, Spanish, and English; they were both distinctively beautiful and elegant, but also pretty brilliant, traits that helped flow seamlessly into the connected rooms of a global upper class. More than actual wealth, my grandmother and Montealegre were rich in cultural and social capital. They were connected to a global elite of sorts. Instant portals bridging the distance between Buenos Aires, New York or Paris. Sort of like Anya Taylor-Joy in our age.

A globalized elite that is still overwhelmingly white, one that always has one foot firmly planted in Europe and the US despite its deep connections to Latin America. Considering that, is someone like Carey Mulligan that much different by virtue of not being Latin American? This is not a leading question. How much weight does the “white Latin American” part of Montealegre’s identity carry compared to the “white global elite” part? Is this different, for example, from playing a (white) Polish, French or Irish character?

We inevitably have to talk about how the Anglo notion of “whiteness” levels any cultural specificity, even among European cultures, which leads to the absurd notions of what being Latino is for many, way too many white Americans, that deem some of us as Persons of Color just because we don’t turn pink when exposed to the sun. I’ve even read articles that considered Ana de Armas, a woman of color! That fundamental misunderstanding translates into two types of very toxic behavior by one too many white Latines, especially those living in the USA: Either a quick reflex to identify themselves as white in the racist sense, disassociating themselves from their cultural Latine roots and condemning it, or trying to wiggle their way into the narrative and identity of Latines of Color, the overwhelming majority in the US, willfully ignoring the strategic privileges that their appearance grants them on a racist society, be it in Latin America or the USA. To put it more bluntly, consider the challenges people like Salma Hayek or Sofía Vergara have had to face vs. the difficulties faced by América Ferrera, Rosario Dawson, or Jennifer López herself. Then there’s the issue of how Latines of Color have been almost completely erased from media in the Region, especially in its most prominent scripted format, the Telenovela, where the roles of poor and working class people are almost always portrayed by white actors, even though we all know its not the right fit.

That being said, when it comes to Hollywood, it’s not like Salma (daughter of an oil exec), Sofía (daughter of landed gentry), Eiza González (daughter of a very popular Mexican TV personality), Adria Arjona (daughter of the most popular singer in Latin America) or Ana de Armas (the sole non-nepo, with no family in the US) haven’t had to contend with its racism, prejudice, fetishization (in particular) and, more importantly, the dearth of good roles for Latines in general. The situation is bad, and worse still, Latine roles keep getting taken by Spaniards.

In that context, it does feel like it was yet another Big Role that could’ve gone to a Latina actress but didn’t. At the same time, if there were ever a Latine person who anyone could play, that would be someone with Felicia Montealegre’s background. This is not even remotely comparable to Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell or all the times Penélope Cruz has played a Colombian woman (MAJOR side eye there). In this case, there is nothing culturally wrong about a British woman playing this particular white Latina. I don’t think this sets a bad precedent, either. The one question we could ask ourselves is, once again, about the weight that Montealegre’s Latine identity had on her and whether that part of her would be better represented by a Latina actress or whether a British actress could grasp that component of her identity.

Carey Mulligan is one of her generation’s most intelligent, empathetic, and dedicated actresses. She can transform herself only with gestures and soft facial expressions. She is someone who could clearly understand and incorporate the cultural background of someone like Montealegre (or my grandmother) into her performance. It would be the same if she were to play someone from a cultural background “closer” to hers, like Sophie Scholl. Mulligan might be perfect for this role precisely because of the subtlety of her five-octave acting range.

But at the same time, it would’ve been nice to see a Latina take on that role as a nod to the places where she spent her childhood and where she came of age. It’s the same thing if you ask me how I would feel about someone like Ruth Wilson playing my grandmother. I would love it, but I would love to see an Argentinian actress portray her even more. The final word in this hypothetical and in Maestro’s case is authenticity. It’s almost entirely arbitrary and recalcitrant. You might justifiably consider it gatekeeping, moving the goalposts by trying to find “Latin-ness” in her performance, even though Latine identity is defined by its elusiveness. But it’s a decision that would have made the casting slightly more perfect, authenticity in the same way you can taste it on your heritage food. That’s all.

Alberto Cox is, indeed, unfathomably posh. Just broke, mostly because his ancestors were pretty fertile, and that’s not how you build generational wealth.