Freddie Prinze Jr. has been one in every of Hollywood’s most outstanding Latino actors since his ’90s teen film heyday. But over the course of his quarter-century profession, the son of late comic and sitcom star, Freddie Prinze, has not often had the chance to signify his tradition onscreen.
“I’ve received nothing but love from Latino taxi drivers to business owners talking about being inspired by seeing a Latino whose not running from the cops or dealing drugs,” he tells Yahoo Entertainment. “But within the industry, I’ve always met with a ton of resistance by directors wanting to check my Latino heritage.”
That’s why Prinze regards his new Netflix vacation film, Christmas With You, as a present that can carry on giving. Directed by Argentine filmmaker, Gabriela Tagliavini, the movie casts the She’s All That star as Miguel — a public faculty music trainer and single dad who makes an surprising Christmastime love reference to a big-time pop star, Angelina, performed by Aimee Garcia. Believe it or not, Prinze says that that is the primary time he is been employed particularly to play a Latino character. “I’ve never gotten to do it before unless I wrote the damn thing,” he notes. “So when Gabriela brought this to me, all I wanted was the opportunity to earn her respect.”
“Every Latino you’ve seen me play was always an after-the-fact thing,” Prinze continues. (The actor has beforehand portrayed Latino characters in Peacock’s Punky Brewster revival and on the eighth season of Fox’s hit motion collection, 24.) “The role would be named ‘Mike Smith’ and they’d say, ‘Oh, we hired Freddie, so we can show people how diverse we are.’ And all of a sudden his name is ‘Miguel Ramirez.’ And that doesn’t count man! That does not count. This was something that was very important to me, and a big reason of why I signed onto this movie.”
Watch a scene from Christmas With You under:
Not for nothing, however Christmas With You can also be one of many few Christmas films to characteristic a Latino household entrance and middle. In latest years, networks and streamers like Hallmark, Hulu, Lifetime and Netflix have sought to diversify their vacation fare with tales that prominently characteristic LGBTQ characters and Black characters, however that change has been gradual to lengthen to different teams. “Aimee mentioned to me that she can’t think of another Latino-family American Christmas movie,” Prinze says. “I was like, ‘I’m sure there must have been.’ But I can’t think of any! That’s what makes this movie so cool.”
“I’ve heard from white people before that they don’t like forced diversity,” he provides. “And I get that, I really do. Creatively, you should never feel like something’s being forced on you and there’s a lot of agenda-written things. But this movie is just about a family celebrating Christmas. It’s about a father who lost his wife, and his daughter lost her mother and he’s trying to play both roles. I know a lot of people, regardless of their race, that grew up with a single parent — I happen to be one of them. So there’s a human element to to the story that everyone can relate to. The only thing that make us different are the foods we eat, the way we dance and the music we like. As soon as you have tacos, you’re in with me, man. And if you hate tacos, that’s all right, too. I hate mayonnaise!”
Food was a giant a part of Prinze’s childhood Christmases in New Mexico, the place he lived along with his mom following his father’s dying simply prior to his first birthday. “Everything is different there,” he remembers. “We were the ones who started luminarios at Halloween instead of lights, and we’d do them for Christmas, too, sometimes. You’d have to find ways of keeping them from melting in the snow! The Native American culture and Mexican culture really combined beautifully in that state and dictated the types of food we would eat and drinks we would drink. We would have sopaipillas with honey and Indian fry bread. Those would all be a staple at every Christmas dinner, and I brought them out to California when I moved back here.”
Prinze continues to serve these New Mexico staples on the vacation dinners he hosts along with his spouse, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and their two youngsters. “I couldn’t find good Mexican food in Southern California before the food truck revolution, so I’d literally ship out green chili and red chili from New Mexico,” he says, laughing. “I’ve served green chili chicken stew on Christmas, and everybody goes bananas for it. I’ve been fortune enough to see cultures embrace one another, and it’s usually food that provides common ground. I know how to cook because of that.”
While Prinze could be a part of one other Latino-centric Christmas film in a heartbeat, do not anticipate to see him return to George Lucas’s far, far-off galaxy for any future vacation specials. The real-life Star Wars fan voiced Jedi survivor Kanan Jarrus on 4 seasons of the fan favourite cartoon collection, Star Wars Rebels, which ended its run in 2018. Since then, although, the Rebels ship famously made a cameo (together with Prinze’s voice) within the Skywalker Saga-capping blockbuster, The Rise of Skywalker, and different animated characters — together with Ahsoka Tano and Bo-Katan — have jumped into the dwell motion realm. But Prinze insists that Kanan will not be becoming a member of them.
“I am done performing in Star Wars,” he says, including that if Kanan does pop up on The Mandalorian or one other Disney+ collection, he will not be the one swinging the Jedi’s blue lightsaber. “I felt like I did a great job with that character, who I love. He had a beautiful story, but it ended and while my connection to him isn’t gone, there’s nothing left for me to give him. It would just be forced, and I don’t like that. I didn’t even want to do voice in The Rise of Skywalker, but [Rebels co-creator] Dave Filoni convinced me! I said no the first time they asked, and he had to make the call. He believed in me for that role in Rebels when Disney didn’t, and for that, I always have his back.”
Christmas With You is presently streaming on Netflix
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