Tonatiuh Opens Up About Channeling “Heartache” & “Longing” In ‘Kiss Of The Spider Woman’

Tonatiuh was born to star in Kiss of the Spider Woman. Written and directed by Bill Condon, the film is set in 1980s Argentina during the militant dictatorship era known as “The Dirty War” and centers on a pair of prison cellmates: Molina (Tonatiuh), a gay window dresser jailed for indecency, who tries to lift the spirits — and gain intelligence — of Valentin (Diego Luna), a political prisoner responsible for stoking a rebellion against the regime, by telling tales about his favorite musical actress, Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez).

All smiles and exuding confidence during our interview, he drops a surprising revelation — he is most certain that he was the last person to audition for it. Even though he sent his self-tape in during the week of Christmas — the actor jokingly refers to it as the time when “Hollywood is asleep” — he simply couldn’t ignore the innate pull of the robust script. “Thousands of submissions were sent in for the role of Molina, but I got the part,” he says humbly. “I just felt a spiritual connection to the material. At the heart of the story is somebody who felt like a loser in their own life until they fell in love…plus [it is] a musical, so there were so many elements that I felt really excited by because [the film was] not just a job. It was truthfully taking a stand and giving Hollywood treatment to communities that normally don’t ever get that love.” 

Below, Tonatiuh speaks with Deadline about bringing Molina, whom the actor uses he/they pronouns for, to life, as well as how he breaks down barriers for actors of color in the industry. 

DEADLINE: What were you up to in your career when Kiss of the Spider Woman came along?

TONATIUH: I had just finished an action film called Carry-On. It was with Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman. It was my first action film, which was super cool. The notification about Kiss of the Spider Woman hit my inbox, and I did a self-tape audition. It was at the end of December, so I was pretty confident that I was the last person to turn in the self-tape because it was December 20th, and by that point, Hollywood is asleep [laugh]. But I got the part. I just felt a spiritual connection to the material, I mean, at the heart of the story is somebody who felt like the loser in their own life until they fell in love. Not to mention it takes place against the backdrop of the Argentinian Dirty War. 

Molina is a genderqueer individual who was wrongfully detained and has a big dilemma: either return to the one person who has ever shown you kindness and love, which is his mother, and obtain this information from Valentin, or essentially stay locked up in this prison until God knows when, until the dictatorship falls. Plus, it was a musical, so there were just so many elements that I felt really excited by. Because it’s not just a job; it’s, truthfully, taking a stand and giving the Hollywood treatment to communities that normally don’t ever get that love. 

DEADLINE: Do you remember what scene you auditioned? 

TONATIUH: It was really simple. It was the song, “She’s a Woman,” and it was a scene where I’m talking to Valentin in the film, where I’m putting up the goddesses and decorating the cell. Very Blanche DuBois, from A Streetcar Named Desire, where she refuses to look at anything horrible and ugly. Being able to transform and pitch as an actor, creating a character, is so fun. The song was the tricky part because there are so many ways a musical can be told. And I didn’t have the full script. I wasn’t quite sure what tone they were going for, whether they wanted to go bigger than life or if they wanted to make it naturalistic. So, I locked myself in my office and really mined it over until I found this emotional truth. I wanted to find this heartache and longing for something outside myself. 

DEADLINE: Let’s talk a bit more about that balance of heartache, longing and dark humor in the film. Molina gets some very good one-liners. How did you find your way into that character?

TONATIUH: The one that needs to be on a shirt is, “Never trust a closeted queen.” I need that on a shirt. But in all seriousness, I’m going to break this down because this is a multifaceted answer. Essentially, when I first read the script, naturally, Molina is at the center. I also got the privilege of playing Kendall Nesbitt, who is very different from Molina. Kendall is the classic Hollywood masculine energy type. So, I said to myself, if Kendall gets to live in the world of hypermasculinity, and at the very end of the film, we find a moment of finding the other extreme, which is pure femininity. I wanted to, as a mission statement, make Molina as genderless and genderqueer as possible. How do we oscillate the totality of humanity because we have both masculine and feminine energies inside all of us? 

As a thought experiment, I was like, OK, if some people never get an opportunity to meet someone who is genderqueer, we have that opportunity here to show their heart, eyes, and spirit. I want their body to be a non-conversation. My first mission was I needed to lose weight because I gained weight for Carry-On to be able to do all of those action stunts. I ended up losing about 45 pounds in 50 days — it was very methodical. I started fasting. I started getting rid of protein from my diet altogether because I needed my body to atrophy. Then, physically, as I was losing the weight, I became frail. I wasn’t able to defend myself in those same ways. And I noticed, I was like, oh, I have to rely on wit. I have to be smarter than the other person. I have to be duplicitous. Because, to a certain extent, Molina is duplicitous, not in a negative way, but as a way of survival. And like any marginalized person, they know how to code-switch at a heartbeat.

So, that’s where one of the lines that really got to me is that there are privileges and degradation. So, how do they navigate the world by pulling the levers to make people give them the thing that they want at whatever cost it takes? It doesn’t matter if you make me small. I’ve already been small my entire life, just give me the thing that I want. But what I found really interesting is as I was constructing the physicality, I found more of their spirit. I wanted to ensure Molina has some of their stubble and armpit hair. I kept those moments. As well as the moments of, “Oh, hey, Molina loves like a mother here. Let’s find an updo to create that essence and create that energy.” And with the finite amount of clothes, how do they hang? Where are they living? And at what point does the mask that all of us naturally have start to fall because they’re exhausted? 

So, if you notice, the construction of the character slowly becomes less of a caricature and becomes more of a person because they’ve never really felt seen by another person. And after a while, they’re exhausted from pretending. That’s how I ended up delving into the psychology. 

With Molina and Kendall, I needed all of me. I couldn’t compartmentalize my soul because it was all needed to bring this person to life. And I think that some of the people who’ve seen the film see themselves because I think that they also inherited this idea that there’s something wrong with parts of them that makes them unlovable. Our film is almost saying, “No, we love you. We see you, and we’re giving you the Hollywood treatment.” 

DEADLINE: The original 1985 film is not this emotionally complex. Talk about some of the conversations you had with Bill Condon. 

TONATIUH: What’s fascinating is that Valentin is the more progressive thinker. Molina has all the conservative thoughts. Molina lives in a world of gender normality. Molina lives in wanting a man to be a man and a woman to be afraid and be held by his man. And he’s consumed by the antiquated 1940s idea of heteronormative relationships. And even though they are the embodiment of the antithesis of that, I think that there’s something really fun there. One of the conversations we constantly had with Bill was, like, how do we take these 2025 nuanced understandings of sexuality and gender expression, in a time when that language doesn’t exist, but that lived reality still does? And so that’s what I took my millennial privilege and my genderqueer studies to really be like, OK, if I can’t find language for this, how can I still showcase that these things existed even then?

Also, listen, Bill Condon is a living legend. He’s very special and a real actor’s director. We did two films, and both had table reads with each actor. We walked it beat by beat, really listening to [the language of the script]. He would ask us questions and even invited us to bring in ideas or to challenge whatever was on the page. He was flexible. There were moments where Diego and I had emotionally reached something on camera that he had already taken out earlier on. He would be like, “Well, we found [the emotion we were looking for]. So, this scene is no longer necessary.” And with no ego, it was just so special. Because he is a master at storytelling, he isn’t stressed about [adapting things]. He brings joy every single day.

DEADLINE: Speaking of changes, the ending is a bit more hopeful, not necessarily for Molina, but for those around him. 

TONATIUH: I do think that when Molina says he did it for love, I think that is the message. And right now, what we’ve been seeing across the United States is people standing up for their neighbors, people they literally do not know, because they don’t want to live in a world like that. They’re doing it for love. They’re doing it for the dignity of somebody else. I do think that as a person, injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. And although Molina is not a revolutionary. He is a lover. And I think that if there were even the smallest opportunity for Valentin to have exited, he would’ve taken it because, outside of their mother, they have never experienced anyone showing them the dignity of seeing them before. 

I think that sometimes when you come from a marginalized community like Molina did, the narrative that you inherit is, “I am wrong, and I am unlovable.” And so, you walk around wounded, trying to mask those things and pretending that you’re not hurting. And so, when someone tells you a narrative separate from that reality that you’ve lived for however many years, you don’t understand it. You know it, but you don’t understand it in your heart. And so, when someone really showed him the kindness and love that they truly deserve, because they do think that joy is their birthright, he wanted to repay that kindness. So, I think that they could have gotten away. It’s kind of like the Titanic Rose moment on the door. They could have both. It’s like, why was there a pothole? You just needed two more steps, girl! But I do think that if they tried to, the car would’ve been taken. I think, in the end, they were happy; they did it for love. 

DEADLINE: You’ve talked about wanting to be defined as more than just a Latino actor. I am curious about how you navigate the space in Hollywood. Are you seeing any major shifts in the industry? 

TONATIUH: No.

DEADLINE: What kind of new roles are you searching for? What do you want people to consider you for, especially after completing a dynamic role like this? 

TONATIUH: Look, I’m very proud of who I am, and I never deny my identity. I love where I come from, but who I am has nothing to do with what I do, not in the sense that I’m not advertising myself as a fill-in-the-blank actor. I’m advertising myself as a good actor, a great actor. And I think that what I find is a movement that is happening at the moment, where a lot of communities of color and a lot of marginalized creatives are just working for each other. We create a coalition in the same way that happens on the larger national stage. I think that some of the kindest people in the industry have been other people who’ve experienced the distaste of being looked over, for whatever reason. And I don’t want to try to understand what that reason is, that there is no service in fixing something that isn’t working for us to begin with.

But what I am excited about is that I love the work I do, creating it, and meeting other people who are obsessed with it and want to create it as well. And I think that what this has opened up for me is meeting producers who are excited and asking me questions like, well, what do you want to create next? And that is a very empowering space. And I think that’s where most creatives want to live. We want to live in the space of, well, what do I want to do? And then take leadership over your own career and take leadership over who you say you want to be in this industry. And sometimes it works, and you may be able to recruit people onto your vision, and sometimes it doesn’t. I think that’s part of the fun of it all. But I think that if we live in a disempowered state, we’re going to keep getting disempowered results. And so, how I’ve been navigating this is through my love of reading. I love reading scripts, and I love reading good work. My goal is to transform yet again. I would love to play a villain, a sci-fi, or a creature. I would love to play another hero, Bond. Why not? Do something akin to living in a Pedro Almodóvar world, or live in a Hayao Miyazaki world, or even something as fun as a Walter White-esque character, something where you don’t recognize me. I think that’d be super fun. 

Anyway, I was reading this play, because my soul needed catharsis. And I really wanted to read it again and do a little research. Well, this play has never had a Broadway revival. So, I met a couple of Broadway producers, and I just called them and was like, “Oh, can you read this? Would you be interested in doing this with me?” And they said yes. So, now we’re working on obtaining the rights to do a Broadway revival. That’s where the empowerment comes back: I think people are excited and want to generate ideas, but we also have to have a vision to invite people to, and if you don’t have that, then what exactly are people investing in?

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]