The Mexican actor and human rights advocate faucets into her inside Sydney Bristow alongside Simu Liu in “The Copenhagen Test,” the brand new spy sequence on Peacock.
Melissa Barrera is not any stranger to a sure kind of espionage. Harmful ones. Typically beginning at nighttime of night time. One explicit covert operation she frequently took half in is one many daughters have needed to take with their resolute moms — Black Friday procuring.
She remembers crossing the border from her hometown in Monterrey, Nuevo León, within the wee hours of the morning to McAllen or Brownsville in Texas to attain primo offers on the big-box shops.
“It felt like a treasure hunt for me,” she recalled. “In my mind, it was like a mission, getting the things that we had to get. I like challenges and being given instructions. That was very satisfying for my personality type.”
That have ready the Mexican actor for her function as a spy juggling secret identities in Peacock’s “The Copenhagen Test,” premiering Dec. 27. The espionage thriller stars Simu Liu as an intelligence analyst whose mind has been hacked, placing his ideas and reminiscences within the fingers of unknown perpetrators. Barrera co-stars as Michelle, a spy tangled within the net of deceit.
“It was a challenge. I’d never done anything like this before, in the sense that you really don’t know who Michelle is,” mentioned the actor, who chatted over Zoom from Barcelona the place she’s filming one other thriller, “Black Tides.”
“It was also confusing for me as an actor, because we didn’t have all the scripts at the beginning, so I had made up who I thought Michelle was — and then I would get more scripts and I was like, ‘Well, that goes out the window.’ It was a constant construction.”
These Black Friday missions weren’t the one methods wherein Barrera was innately ready for the function. Rising up, she devoured the Jennifer Garner spy sequence “Alias.” She spent hours as a teen watching and rewatching episodes on DVD. It was Garner’s ass-kicking flip as Sydney Bristow, and her many stealthy alter egos, that planted a seed in Barrera.
“I was obsessed with that show,” she says. “As a young teenager, I was like, ‘I want to be a spy.’ I would research online: ‘How do you get recruited as a spy?’ That’s how obsessed I was.”
She longed for intrigue, for covert operations, for wigs. Not simply the sort of spy enterprise that equates to elbowing señoras at Finest Purchase for a deeply discounted TV. After which got here “The Copenhagen Test.”
“I just thought that it was so fun, the role playing within the role playing that happens,” she mentioned. “I read the scripts, and they were really good. And I got to be a spy. I was like, this is a no-brainer for me. I’ve been asking for this since I was 12, so it was a dream come true for young me.”
From “Episode 101” of “The Copenhagen Test”: Melissa Barrera as Michelle and Simu Liu as Alexander.
A spy sequence is simply the most recent in an extended wishlist of roles for Barrera, who bought to flex her dramatic facet in “Vida,” her vocal and dance prowess within the musical “In the Heights,” and dive into scream queen territory in “Scream V” and “Scream VI.”
“I think it’s valuable for Latinos onscreen to bring in some of their background when it fits, and when it doesn’t, there’s no need to push it — I’m representing Latinos just by being there,” mentioned Barrera, with a nod to ongoing discussions surrounding Latino inclusion in Hollywood. “[Yet] I’ve always wanted to explore all parts of myself. I’ve always wanted to try different things. I think it’s been happening, because I do believe that whatever you put out into the universe comes to you.”
It’s not simply dream performing roles that Barrera places out into the universe, hoping it produces one thing good. The 35-year-old is an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights, sporting her beliefs fairly actually on her chest — throughout our name she sports activities a hoodie with the phrase “words not actions” within the form of a watermelon, an emblem of perseverance and resistance for Palestinian individuals. She’s by no means shied away from utilizing her voice, specifically for this particular human rights problem, and it’s include its penalties.
Two years in the past, Barrera was fired from the forthcoming installment of the Scream franchise, “Scream VII,” in addition to dropped from her company for posts she shared and wrote on social media calling Israel’s assaults on Gaza acts of genocide and ethnic cleaning.
“Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp,” learn one in all her Instagram tales in following the occasions of Oct. 7. “Cornering everyone together, with no where to go, no electricity no water … People have learnt [sic] nothing from our histories. And just like our histories, people are still silently watching it all happen. THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING.”
Her firing drew widespread consideration and important dialogue over what was seen by many as the most recent type of Hollywood blacklisting. Final yr, Barrera spoke to De Los concerning the backlash, saying, “It wasn’t easy to be labeled as something so horrible when I knew that wasn’t the case. But I was always at peace because I knew I had done nothing wrong. I was aligned with human rights organizations globally, and so many experts and scholars and historians and, most importantly, Indigenous peoples around the world.”
Over a yr later, her stance hasn’t modified. The truth is, that interval modified the whole lot for Barrera.
“I’ve always had that inner inquietude, that kind of yearning for equality and for justice and for eliminating any kind of prejudices and racism and colorism, which is very prevalent in Mexico,” she defined. “But I honestly think it was Palestine that did it for me, that crumbled everything for me. After that, it’s been a before and after in my way of thinking and my way of viewing the world; in my way of viewing the industry and the way that I want to move forward.”
As Barrera strikes ahead, utilizing her platform to talk up for injustice is inextricable from her sense of self and her place in Hollywood. What she brings to the display is her full self, whatever the function; to play a spy, or a scream queen, or some other character takes understanding who you’re and what you stand for. Now, greater than ever, Barrera is firmly grounded and prepared for motion.
