By Gina Abdy
NEW YORK (AP) --Agencies, writers, producers: The time is now for Hollywood to do more in terms of diversity behind the scenes, Dascha Polanco said.
In front of the cameras, the "Orange is the New Black" co-star said the industry must stop thinking of her and so many of her co-stars on the recently wrapped Netflix series as non-traditional Hollywood types based on size, looks, race, age or sexual orientation.
"We are the tradition. We are the reality," Polanco told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "Hollywood has been very exclusive in who they consider an actor, who they want to depict on screens."
Polanco said diversity on screen is slowly lurching forward, but it's equally important to do the same off camera. Her struggles finding work are not without emotional scars. She struggles daily over "self-love, self-acceptance, self-care."
"A lot of my life as a young girl and as a young adult has been influenced by how people will accept me or feeling that I am not enough to accomplish certain things because of how I look. I was very fearful of going out on auditions and being told, 'Well you have to lose weight, your hair is curly,'" Polanco said.
Learning how to make peace with discrimination and prejudice in her past is key for Polanco.
"It's learning how to embrace those scars and how we use them as foundation and not as identity," she said.
Now that "Orange" has wrapped, Polanco said she wants to spend more time enjoying every moment as she pursues life after the hit show launched her career. She'll appear in the film version of "In the Heights," and she's auditioning like the old days.
"I'm back in the battlegrounds," she said. "I'm still out here not getting roles, and I see who they cast, somebody who looks totally opposite of me, size, look, experience, totally opposite. Not necessarily not talented or more talented. It's just, you know, there's a lot that has to be done to change."
Polanco said she has the mind of a hustler.
"I don't have time to sit here and wait," she said. "I'm always thinking about how can I capitalize? I learned that from 50 Cent."
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
Weinstein,... Read More