John Leguizamo says he was fired from a film so it wouldn't become a 'Latin movie'

For more than 25 years, John Leguizamo has been, to many a Black and brown kid in the audience, a welcome and vibrant presence in films, from Carlito's Way and To Wong Foo to his teamings with Baz Luhrmann in Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge, to his most recent turn as Bruno in Disney's hit Encanto. Leguizamo was also quite often the only Latin presence in a Hollywood system that is only now beginning to properly invest in Latinx talent, both in front of and behind the camera.

"I feel like I've had to fight to get here and I've earned the scars and the wounds. And I want to talk about how I had to fight to get here," he said in a sit-down with host Nick Barili for Seen, the Academy of Motion Pictures new video series. In the first episode of the series, Leguizamo discusses having to chart his own path in Hollywood. That path, he reveals, was littered with racism, colorism, and sometimes just plain ignorance.

In one account he shared with the host, Leguizamo alleged that a director fired him from a film when a Latin actress was hired because they couldn't "have two Latin people in the movie."

"I was in a movie for a week," he told Baralli. "And I got a call from the director going, 'Oh, John, I'm sorry, I can't have you in the movie …. We cast this Latin actress and we can't have two Latin people in the movie because it becomes a Latin movie. You know what I mean, right?'"

EW reached out to Leguizamo about this experience and, through reps, he revealed the film he was referencing was 2006's Lonely Hearts, starring John Travolta, Salma Hayek, and Jared Leto. Based on a true story, Hayek and Leto play Martha Beck and Ray Fernandez, a murderous couple known as the "Lonely Hearts Killers" who lure their victims through the personals. The Fernandez character played by Leto, according to Leguizamo, had originally been his role.

Sources close to the production, however, insisted to EW that Leguizamo was never cast in the film, and that Leto had been cast as Fernandez long before Hayek was offered the project. And, they note, Leguizamo says his experience took place eight years ago — Lonely Hearts was released 16 years ago.

In a statement to EW, director Todd Robinson says, "I respect John Leguizamo and admire his exceptional talent. It saddens me that someone might have qualified a casting decision in such a hurtful, thoughtless, and unacceptable way. It certainly was not me. I wish John only continued success."

EW has reached out to the production company, as well as reps for Travolta and Leto, with no response at time of publishing. Hayek was unavailable for comment.

In the video interview, Leguizamo also discussed colorism within the Latino community, which he notes that "we have to to fix." But, he noted, "there's colorism in Hollywood, too."

"I mean, I'd benefited from being light-skinned and I stayed out of the sun so I could work. I definitely would not go in the sun for years." He added, "A lot of the Latinos that made it so far, a lot of them were all light-skinned, you know? What happened to all the Afro-Latinos and the majority of indigenous Latinos? They don't get a shot. So there's a lot of things we got to deal with in Hollywood, and we gotta fix them. We gotta speak out and we gotta speak up."

For all his trials and tribulations in Hollywood, Leguizamo found a freer space in theater. In 2017, he brought his critically-acclaimed show Latin History for Morons to Broadway, earning a Tony nomination for Best Play, as well as receiving a Special Tony for his body of work and for bringing diverse stories and audiences to Broadway for three decades.

In his review of the Broadway show, EW called Latin History for Morons "a sobering expression of political urgency that reflects its star's maturation as a Latino public figure." The show was so successful in its run, that Netflix soon bought and released it as a comedy special in 2018.

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