By Amanda Moses
The Tribeca Festival held the world premiere of the dark thriller/comedy The Horror of Dolores Roach at the SVA Theatre on June 15th with a spectacular red carpet, featuring the all-star cast and celebrity guests.
Prime Video’s The Horror of Dolores Roach is based on a Spotify podcast that has an urban twist on the Demon Barber Sweeny Todd legend—except this time it takes place in Washington Heights and includes empanadas with a secret meat recipe. Starring Justina Machado as Dolores Roach, a woman who was incarcerated for 16 years and returns to her home in Washington Heights only to find her neighborhood has been gentrified. With little work options, Roach uses her skills in massage therapy and works as a masseuse in the basement of her friend Luis’ empanada shop (played by Alejandro Hernandez). After her underground business begins to succeed, one man attempts to jeopardize all that she has done, but what she does to survive might make others weak in the stomach.
At the Tribeca Festival, stars Justina Machado, Alejandro Hernandez, Kita Updike, K. Todd Freeman, Gloria Calderon Kellett and others shared with the Spring Creek Sun what drew them to their roles and the message that this new series tries to send when dealing with topics on incarceration, gentrification, and more.
For Machado, the focus of her playing Dolores Roach was not solely the issue of incarceration among the Black and Brown community, but rather the struggle and fight a woman has to make in securing her survival. Machado has played in both the horror and comedy genre, but never in a role that incorporated both.
“The role is an incredible role that is hardly played by women, any color, any race, any nationality, any ethnicity. It’s exciting to get out of the box that they try to put us in. You know, we have a lot of messages in the show. Yes, we have a message about what happens post incarceration. What happens with Black and Brown people get locked up for something like selling weed for like 16 years? What happens when a neighborhood is gentrified? But the show was much more than that,” Machado said.
“It was freeing. It was exhilarating. Imagine just playing somebody unhinged. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, but she’d snap your neck. So, there’s something really exhilarating and fun and a little dark but it’s a horror comedy. So, I’ve never been involved in a horror comedy. I’ve been involved in a horror film and a comedy, but not both of them together,” Machado added.
Jessica Pimentel, known for her role in the Netflix hit Orange is the New Black, says that the criminal justice system is an ongoing topic because it continues to dish out unfair sentencing for the Black and Brown community.
“Yes, once again, we’re talking about a criminal justice system where someone gets an unfair amount of time for something that is right now not even illegal anymore. And you have people that are still serving sentences for very minor nonviolent crimes. And it’s something that needs to be looked at, corrected, and fixed. We have to figure out a better way, especially for the people who are already in. We need to correct this and give them their justice that they deserve, especially now since times have changed and things have changed, especially in New York City,” Pimentel said.
Additionally, Pimentel shares that the meat pies, called empanadas, can be seen as a metaphor for eating away or fighting back against gentrification.
“Yes, I mean, the whole thing is, to see it as a metaphor, you know, eating it up, eating up that gentrification, eating up that destruction of culture, eating up that complete virus of society, all-consuming. So just see it all as a big metaphor of how people can destroy their own environment or infiltrate an environment that is not theirs and completely erase what was there. Not everyone is going to take it lightly,” Pimentel said.
Alejandro Hernandez, who plays Roach’s stoner friend and owner of the infamous empanada shop, describes the role as bizarre but also a bit relatable due to the battle against gentrification.
“It was a role that I found very unique and strange and very, very bizarre, but at the same time familiar. There are a lot of things about Luis, ixnay on cannibalism and all that stuff in his psychotic nature, there’s a lot of Luis that I’ve found to be very, very reminiscent of my views and reminiscent of his fears like cultural gentrification. Having your community and your culture kind of wiped out and washed over and him going through really, really extreme measures to preserve that. But definitely that sense of like culture and a sense of pride and that sense of like legacy I believe in that,” Hernandez told the Spring Creek Sun.
Executive Producer, Gloria Calderon Kellett also added The Horror of Dolores Roach is a television series that finally focuses on Latinos and the struggles trying to maintain their cultural identity in an ever-changing world.
Photos by Amanda Moses
