The Jane the Virgin leading lady stars alongside the action man in Deepwater Horizon, a drama which tells the true story of the workers who risked their lives in the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The project marked Gina’s first feature film role, and it was Mark who she looked up to the most while shooting the movie, since they came from similar backgrounds and understand that success isn’t a singular journey.
“One thing I find extremely empowering about Mark is that he doesn’t want to do it alone,” she tells Latina magazine. “He wants to help everyone around him, uplift everyone around him. Mark understands that he got to where he was because of all the people that helped him get there, including himself.”
“He got me,” she continues. “He got the idea that s**t was hard and I pushed through. It wasn’t just hard as a Latina, it wasn’t just hard as a curvy leading lady, but it was hard as a woman. It was hard as somebody that came from the hood. He gets the struggle, and he could see it in someone else.”
Gina went on to call her new friend a “bada**”, and also sang the praises of her other cast members, saying, “John Malkovich, Kurt Russell, Kate Hudson – I learned so much from these people, from this cast, from this family.”
The Puerto Rican-American beauty also adds that prior to getting cast in the movie, she encouraged director Peter Berg to hire a fellow Latina for the part of a real-life Latina – even if it wasn’t her.
“I play Andrea Fleytas, a real-life hero, who’s a Latina from California, and I thought for her not to be portrayed by a Latino would have been devastating,” Gina admits. “It didn’t need to be me. I told Peter it can be any Latina out there crushing it and killing the game.”
Deepwater Horizon hits cinemas in September (16).
