Zoe Saldaña embraces Latin culture and her birth name for Netflix animation

Record ID: 1642596

  • Title: Zoe Saldaña embraces Latin culture and her birth name for Netflix animation
  • Date: 19th October 2021
  • Summary: UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATION (OCTOBER 13, 2021) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTOR, ZOE SALDAÑA, SAYING: "We're finally here. I get to share what I'm most excited about, which is my heritage. I love, I love where I'm from and I love who I am and there's so much about the Latinx culture that we don't know. These are civilizations that are thousands of years old so gett
  • Embargoed: 2nd November 2021 20:05
  • Keywords: Aztec Jorge Gutierrez Latin culture Maya and the Three Mayan Netflix Zoe Saldana animation series
  • Location: UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS; LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
  • City: UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS; LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Arts/Culture/Entertainment,Television,United States
  • Reuters ID: LVA006EZYPPOT
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: New Netflix animation 'Maya and the Three' has allowed its top voice actor, Zoe Saldaña, to reconnect with her Latin roots as well as her birth name.
    The series, which begins streaming on Netflix on Friday (October 22), gathers together mythologies from Latin American cultures to tell an epic story of four heroes who set out to defeat the gods of the underworld.
    At the beginning of each episode, Saldaña's name is shown with a tilde over the 'n'.
    "It happened so young when my name was stripped from me," said Saldaña. "My kindergarten teacher, I remember, said you're not Saldaña, that letter doesn't exist and so we can't pronounce that. And remember, when you're a child, you believe and you adjust to anything that the grown-ups do because they're the gatekeepers, right? I didn't know how much it impacted me because I didn't know the importance of my name until I was old enough to understand that your name is everything, right?"
    Saldaña has mostly been billed without the tilde in projects like 'Guardians of the Galaxy' and 'Avengers: Endgame' but now she wants to move forward with her correct name.
    "This is important. My name was taken from me and I want it back. I want to see my name how it's written on my birth certificate and so it feels really good. It feels really good," she said.
    Saldaña also believes that an animation like 'Maya and the Three' will help audiences understand about Latin culture.
    "We're finally here. I get to share what I'm most excited about, which is my heritage," she said.
    The series doesn't shy away from death. Unlike conventional Hollywood animations, a number of characters die or get killed throughout the series.
    This is because Latin cultures celebrate death, not shun it, Saldaña said.
    "We're normalizing the inevitable that not a single person or a single tree or a single animal has ever been able to cheat death so why are we trying to avoid talking about it? So normalizing it at an early age, I believe it frees a human being to live a fuller life," she said.
    (Production: Rollo Ross)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2021. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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