Ana de Armas had a breakout role in the dark comedy Knives Out, but the Cuban beauty nearly turned down the role after she read the description of her character. Three words in the description had de Armas fearing the character was a stereotypical Latina. After taking a look at the entire script, however, de Armas had a change of heart.
De Armas revealed her hesitation during an interview with NPR. She explained that while she was nervous, “terrified” even, to be acting with huge Hollywood stars like Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Chris Evans, her nerves weren’t the reason for thinking twice before taking on the role of Marta Cabrera.
The description nearly turned Ana de Armas away
“Well, at first, I just got a…single page with a very small description and just one scene so I couldn’t really see what it was about,” de Armas told the outlet. That “very small description” gave de Armas pause, since part of it read, “caretaker, Latina, pretty.” For de Armas, those words “didn’t mean anything.” To her, they represented the usual roles that Latin people were offered. “…We are represented as that, the help or the criminal or someone like that.”
De Armas didn’t keep quiet about her concerns. She spoke with the producers of Knives Out and asked for the full script to get a better sense of her character. Luckily, de Armas’ request was fulfilled and when she was finally able to read the script, she was delighted to see that it wasn’t the stereotypical role she’d feared. “…When they did send it, I realized that, well, that description didn’t fit at all, didn’t make justice to Marta.”
Marta turned out to be fairly “complex”
After reading the script, de Armas found Marta to be “very complex” and “probably the smarter one in the whole film.” De Armas revealed that she felt “very lucky” to have the chance to play the character, whom she called “the heart of the film.” It’s very fortunate that de Armas chose to join the cast of Knives Out. Even surrounded by more veteran actors and ostensibly bigger stars, de Armas truly shined, which might be why the film has a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
De Armas’ burgeoning status as the new Hollywood “It Girl” and her good looks mean the actress is often targeted by the tabloids. Their go-to stories typically involve romance. For instance, back in November 2019, Life & Style reported that Ben Affleck was falling in love with de Armas. Gossip Cop reached out to Affleck’s rep, who laughed off the outlet’s claims. They were simply untrue.
OK! made their own contribution to the rumor mill when they published a story claiming Bradley Cooper had asked Ana de Armas to dinner. Gossip Cop looked into this story and found it to be untrue. An individual close to the situation was able to confirm our suspicions that Cooper and de Armas had no intentions of going on a dinner date.