Gina Rodriguez on Jane the Virgin: ???She Ain???t Two Pounds, but She???s Sexy”

TV never looked so good. And women are the reason! Three badass standouts of the fall season—Taraji P. Henson, Gina Rodriguez, and Emma Roberts—show why smart actresses in smart roles win every time.

A few years ago Gina Rodriguez was just another actress trying to make it in L.A. She had a handful of typical coming-up credits to her name—soapy stuff on The Bold and the Beautiful, cop-drama bit roles on Rizzoli & Isles and The Mentalist—and she was crossing her fingers that her new series Jane the Virgin would be her big break, complete with its crazy “girl who’s never had sex gets accidentally artificially inseminated” premise.

Six months later she stood on the Golden Globes stage, tearfully clutching the award for best actress in a TV comedy series. For Rodriguez the moment was especially sweet because she had dreamed of playing a character that defied Latina stereotypes—she’d flat-out refused to accept anything less, even turning down a high-profile TV role as a housekeeper because she felt it reinforced old clichés. As the 31-year-old Puerto Rican put it in her acceptance speech, “This award is so much more than myself. It represents a culture that wants to see themselves as heroes.”

And in Jane—who returns for the show’s second season October 12—Rodriguez has created a hero brimming with ambition, which makes sense since Rodriguez herself is the class president of real life: She just shot the oil-spill drama Deepwater Horizon; she’s finishing up a book, I Can and I Will: Tools My Daddy Gave Me; and she’s using her fame to educate Latina women through the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. She’s also—wait for it—training in boxing. One thing’s for certain about Rodriguez: The champ is in the ring.

Read her cover interview below. For more, pick up the October issue of Glamour on newsstands, subscribe now, or download the digital edition.

GLAMOUR: In your Golden Globes acceptance speech, you cited your dad’s words to you: “Today is a great day. I can and I will.” Ten months later that phrase is everywhere—in Twitter hashtags, on T-shirts. What’s it like to watch it become the mantra of total strangers?

GR: It’s awesome. I remember that night, right after I came off- stage, my manager said, “You have to see what’s going on.” He showed me all these people talking about it online. People gravitate toward positivity.

GLAMOUR: You’re using “I can and I will” as the title of your memoir, which is based on lessons your dad taught you about life. So what did he teach you?

GR: A real leader, in my opinion, is one who creates other leaders. And that’s what my father did. He taught my siblings and me how to be leaders. There was never an ego situation where he needed to know we were following him.

GLAMOUR: You’ve talked a lot about the limitations put on Latino actors in Hollywood. How has Jane changed the game?

GR: People say this is a Latino show. But this is just a show that happens to have people with ancestors who come from other countries. None of us wants to be defined anymore. We’re human, dude. I feel like I was meant to do something—and nothing about me, genetically, is gonna stop me from doing that. Jane feels the same way.

GLAMOUR: It’s cool to see a show with a strong female family bond. Is the love between you, your Jane mom, Andrea Navedo [who plays Xiomara], and grandma Ivonne Coll [Alba] as real offscreen as it is on, when you’re hashing out drama on the porch?

GR: We call it the porch of tears! I always have to cry on the porch. We’re in love with each other. Andrea is so much like the women in my family I feel like we’re blood relatives. And Ivonne is abuela to me—I call her abuela in real life too.

GLAMOUR: People talk about Jane as a role model—she’s smart, independent, ambitious, and kind. What has she taught you?

GR: She’s taught me that you can be many different things at once. Yeah, she doesn’t have sex, but she’s not uncool. She ain’t two pounds, but she’s sexy. And playing a character who realizes she has no control over her future helped me understand my journey. I didn’t get discovered right out of college [Rodriguez studied drama at New York University] the way I thought I was going to. It was like, “OK, this dream isn’t looking the way I thought it was going to look.” I had to learn to let go and have faith.

GLAMOUR: In the season finale of Jane, your character gave birth to a son. What’s it like to go through that on TV?

GR: After preparing for it, I don’t know if I’ll ever touch a man again. I was crying when I watched it, because it felt like I had given birth to my first season ever. It felt like such an accomplishment. It also made me realize that I want to give birth to my career first.

GLAMOUR: I hear that in your time off set, you’ve gotten seriously into boxing. How did that happen?

GR: My father was a referee for professional boxing and would take me to the fights with him. He taught all of us how to box. The boxing gym is like my church outside of church. I’ve been training every day. I’ve been sparring with men; I haven’t actually fought a woman yet. I’ve gotten hit a few times in the face. [But] I feel so strong emotionally.

GLAMOUR: You talk a lot about body image and beauty. How do you deal with Hollywood’s crazy standards?

GR: We all live in our own beauty, and when I look in the mirror, I see mine. I have to help myself understand and continue to remind myself that I’m enough, and then do that for others. Do you feel me?

GLAMOUR: Absolutely. You recently turned 31 and have never been busier. What do you want for this decade?

GR: I want peace, big-time. In my twenties I was willing to do all kinds of crazy things and deal with all kinds of crazy things. It was fun. But now I want to make good choices and hold myself accountable for them. And I want to help others…. There’s definitely nothing wrong with using your art for strength and for good.

GLAMOUR: It wasn’t that long ago that you were in a tough spot too, trying to find your breakout moment. You waitressed for a while, just as Jane does as she dreams of making it as a writer.

GR: Yeah, and there were times when people would treat me like human scrap. There were times I would pull up to a table and think, “I’m an educated woman. You know nothing about me. Would you speak that way to your mama?” But it’s the mirror thing: The way somebody treats you is really the way they feel about themselves.

GLAMOUR: What do you realize now that you’re on the other side of that struggle?

GR: Going after your dream takes forever. But you realize that all the roughness, the struggles, the obstacles—they don’t mean jack when it happens. When I see the billboards for the show now, I feel like they’re saying to me, “Don’t stop. Keep going.”

Don’t miss our cover interviews with Taraji P. Henson and Emma Roberts. For more, pick up the October issue of Glamour on newsstands, subscribe now, or download the digital edition.