Justina Machado on coming full circle in Real Women Have Curves

Time Out

6 days ago

If you ride the curves well enough, sometimes you come full circle. One of Justina Machado's first major roles as an actor was in a 1992 Chicago production of Josefina Lopez's Real Women Have Curves, in which she starred as Ana, the play's big-dreaming and full-figured teenage Latina heroine. Machado went on to become a beloved TV star on such series as Six Feet Under and the reboot of One Day at a Time; meanwhile, Lopez's play went Hollywood, too, where it was made into a 2002 indie film. Now that Real Women Have Curves has been further adapted into a warm, funny and entertaining new Broadway musical, Machado has been reunited with the material—but this time as Ana's loving but hard-headed mother, Carmen. Her performance is a master class in presence, timing and old-fashioned comic knowhow, and it has garnered her a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. We chatted with Machado about her history with the show and her experience of performing it for adoring audiences today.
In advance of the Tony Awards on June 8, Time Out has conducted in-depth interviews with select nominees. We'll be rolling out those interviews every day this week; the full collection to date is here.
This isn't your first Broadway musical: You also did a stint in In The Heights in 2009. How is this experience different from that one?
Well, in In The Heights, I was just taking over for a short period of time while Andréa Burns had her vacation. I had already seen it—my friend Carlos Gomez played the father and I went to go see it, and I said, Oh my God, I have to do this show! This is my generation's West Side Story! It just blew me away. That was an incredible dream come true. But Real Women is something that I've always wanted to do: to originate a role in a musical.
That's such an important distinction, because the original casts of musicals have a profound effect on their development: The things that work for them get kept, things that don't work for them don't, and their DNA ends up getting stamped into the show—everyone who does it afterwards has to fit a role that was shaped by the original performer. How far does your involvement with this particular show go back?
I did the play! I did this play when I was 20 years old—19 going on 20—at Victory Gardens in Chicago. I played Ana.
Wow! I somehow didn't know that. That's wild.
If you get the play by Josefina Lopez, I'm on the cover. The company that did Real Women Have Curves in Chicago in 1992 is on the cover. And now in the show I say the name Marisela Ochoa—the name of my friend who played my sister in that play, and who died of breast cancer [in 2011]. We have little things like that in the show. But Carmen is very different from who she was in the original play. And the musical is very different from the original in a whole lot of other ways, too.
The essence of Ana is there, and that's the most important thing. That story is there. But everybody else has been kind of musicalized. So I do have DNA in this. I think you actually said that perfectly—everything you just said is exactly how it went. I did a 29-hour reading —not the first 29-hour reading, but maybe the second or the third—and then there was a workshop that I couldn't do because I was making a movie. But then there were the rehearsals for A.R.T. [American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge] and then doing it over there, and then now this. So yes, we worked on it together. They were very collaborative. There were things that I thought would work better or they thought would work better, and they absolutely allowed me to shape her. And then you're in front of an audience, where—especially in a musical—the response is so immediate: You can tell right away whether a musical number's working or whether a joke is working. Has the show changed much from the version at the A.R.T.?
It's interesting, because when you're in it, I don't think you really know it. I went off and did a whole other project that I was involved in, and when I came back, it felt cleaner and more streamlined. I do know that people who saw it at A.R.T. and then saw this one, think that a lot has changed. I just know that it's tighter and it flows better.
How much other theater have you done in your career? Because I think a lot of people know you mainly from your work on television.
Well, I started a long time ago. I'm from Chicago, and when I first started I did a lot of theater and commercials and industrials and all those things. And then I moved to New York in '94 with the goal of getting on Broadway—with the goal of doing exactly what I'm doing now, thirty years later. But what ended up happening was I got a job in L.A. about six months later. I got a pilot, and I never left—I just kept working in Los Angeles. So really, not a lot of theater. That's where I started, but…you know, L.A.'s not really a theater town. But I did two shows in L.A. early in my career. And I did Mambo Kings, which was 20 years ago. That's how I met Sergio. Sergio was choreographing Mambo Kings, and that was gonna be my way into Broadway. I was like, Yes, finally, I'm realizing that dream! And then that died. We did it at the Golden Gate [Theatre in San Francisco], but never came to New York. And then In The Heights was the next thing. So that's what it's been. It's sporadic.
But you did do a sitcom with a live studio audience, and you did it for years. I think people may not quite realize how theatrical that set-up is. It's sort of a holdover from a time when the culture was transitioning from live theater to television.
It absolutely is. Our musical is so incredible that we get a lot of reaction from the audience. When Ana and Henry kiss, they're like, 'Woo!' Or when I fat-shame Ana, I get hisses and gasps and all that. So it reminds me a lot of the studio audience in One Day at a Time. And when you shoot in front of a studio audience, if a joke doesn't work, they will change that joke immediately. They'll come up to you, give you new lines, and you'll have to learn those lines then, and try it again. So it really is like theater. I've never not felt comfortable in front of an audience, because that's where I started. It's just not where my career led me.
It feels like you have a special relationship with the audience at Real Women —you know how to ride the waves of response, which people sometimes don't.
Yeah. I think that came from One Day at a Time. I swear to God! Because at One Day at a Time, that's what happens. You let them write it with a studio audience. You let them write it, you let them guide you. And I think that was probably the best training I could have had before this.
I saw the show on a press night, when the audience generally is usually more responsive than on a regular night, but even so, I was struck by how vocal the crowd was—in a great way. It was great fun to be a part of that energy. But how much does that differ night to night? It can't always be that big a wave.
It's not always that way, believe me. But one of the things I've learned is that just because they're not responding the way you'd like them to doesn't mean that they're not listening—it doesn't mean that they're not in it, it doesn't mean that they're not appreciating it. Sometimes I'll be like, Oh my God, that was terrible. And then my friend who was sitting in the audience will say, 'Are you kidding me? We were going crazy! Didn't you hear that?' But like any human being, you go to the bad thing right away, even when it's just one thing that throws you off. Of course, audiences vary. But I will say, honestly, probably 85% of the time they are excited and vocal. And it's really incredible.
One thing people may not know about this show is how clever it is. The comedy songs are not only funny but also feel really fresh—they're singing about things we haven't heard in Broadway musicals before.
Yeah. Like menopause!
Like menopause, yes, or the philosophical number in the first act about being a bird. And of course the big title number, when everyone lets it all hang out.
That one always gets a huge reaction. That one, probably 95% of the time, gets a standing ovation. Which is a payoff for us, because nobody wants to take their clothes off. Everybody's like, Oh God, here we go! But the audience gets it. They get the message, and the message is layered. People sob and people get up. One of the things that we always notice is that most of the time, men are the first to get up. And of course, women follow. But it's really beautiful. Not in a gross way—in an empowering, fantastic way.
I think probably a lot of men agree with the sentiment of the title more than mass culture suggests.
You know what, I think you're correct. We've been fed all this of what we're supposed to look like and be like. But we learn something every single day. I mean, listen, I have the most clothes on, so I'm okay. I have basically shorts that go all the way up. If I had to have little panties, that might be a different story. But thank God, it's nestled in between things, so we don't really have much time to think about it. And everybody's great. I stand on that stage every night with those incredibly brave, fierce Latina women that stand in their authenticity, that stand in their power. A lot of them are new to the business, and they're so incredible. They're going to be big stars.
Are there any parts of the show that you especially look forward to performing every night?
Once I get on that stage, I have to look forward to everything, because it's a roller coaster. I never really leave. I have to just enter with enthusiasm and be like, Okay! One of the numbers that I love is "I Got It Wrong." It's for many reasons—one is because it's the end of the musical, and I'm like, Yes, I've made it through! But also because it's so freaking beautiful. So I look forward to that number. But I look forward to it all.
The musical is so funny and sweet, but it also deals with immigration in a way that feels very timely for the moment we're in. I know that you're from Chicago, but I wonder if you have any personal relationship to that issue.
We're Puerto Rican. I'm first-generation, but we didn't immigrate, we migrated. But still we have the same experience. This is the thing. What's happening right now—if you're Latino, if you speak Spanish, it doesn't seem like you're safe, whether you're a citizen or not. Yes, we're American citizens, but just the other day, my grandfather, who's 97 years old, went to get his Real ID, and they wouldn't give it to him because he doesn't have his original birth certificate. So now he can't go to Puerto Rico. As a Puerto Rican, I never had to deal with being scared of La Migra, which is what it was before ICE. I didn't have to be scared growing up. When I did the world premiere, I didn't even know what La Migra was. I had no idea, as a 19-year-old girl in Chicago, that there were undocumented people. Maybe that's naive and ridiculous, but Chicago's such a segregated city that there are just things you don't grow up knowing. So yes, the show is timely. It's relevant. But the sad thing is, it's always been timely. It's always been relevant. It's just so in our faces right now. And when people come and see this, they feel seen, they feel heard. It's doing something. It's not just us doing it at the James Earl Jones Theatre and having an all-Latino cast. It's bigger than that. It's like this beautiful kind of movement.
One of the things that makes the musical's message so effective, I think, is that is set in a different time. It's not specifically about what's happening now with ICE. So it has an oblique quality, but it still gets something that's true and has been true for most of our lifetimes.
Absolutely. And they do it in such a beautiful way—the way that people like to learn, the way that people like to be seen. Nobody likes to be hit over the head with things. So you walk out and go, 'Oh, wait, whoa: It wasn't just about that, it was about this. And it wasn't just about this, it was about that. And I can relate to this part or that part.' That's why I hope it has a long life—because it deserves it.