Ana de Armas nearly passed on joining the Knives Out cast. The elaborate whodunit took the world by storm last November, surpassing box office expectations and earning both critical and commercial acclaim. The film not only featured an all-star cast, including Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Christopher Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, and de Armas, among others, but Knives Out introduced an intricate murder mystery that dazzled viewers.
Knives Out follows the incredibly wealthy, highly dysfunctional Thrombey family. When family patriarch Harlan Thrombey turns up dead, Detective Benoit Blanc arrives on scene to deem everyone a suspect. Amid the chaos, Marta Cabrera, Harlan’s dedicated, hardworking nurse, emerges as the central protagonist through her kind, grounded nature.
In an interview with Flaunt, de Armas explains she almost passed on her iconic role as Marta. When she first received an invitation to audition for Knives Out, she found the character description of Marta was painstakingly reductive: “Latina, caretaker, pretty.” From this brief description, de Armas says that she wasn’t interested in the part, as she assumed Marta would just be branded as a stereotypical Latina character. You can catch de Armas’ full quote below:
“Things could have been very different. I really pay attention to what that little description is. I’m sure whoever did it wasn’t thinking about what that meant but for me, I was just like, ‘Oh no, I’m not doing this!’ What do you mean—caretaker, Latina, pretty?’ I’m very proud of being Cuban and being Latina and I will play the most Latina any Latina has ever played Latina. But it also doesn’t interest me that much, all the time. It gets very boring, very quickly and I want to do other things… and even if you’re playing a Latina, not all Latinas are the same… I want to think and believe that I can play anybody, anywhere in the world because the stories I want to tell are universal. I want to be able to tell any story.”
De Armas’ cultural pride and reluctance to play stereotyped characters bakes into the larger issue of diversity within Hollywood. The American movie industry has long been controlled by white men, and there have been dozens of movies where the central protagonist has been whitewashed, including the infamous example of Ghost in the Shell. Even when diverse characters are included in films, they are more often than not reduced to the same, redundant character traits and stereotypes. As such, de Armas’ sentiment of wanting “to play anybody [and]…tell any story” is an incredibly powerful one, and highlights the importance of creating complex, nuanced characters of color in Hollywood movies.
Although the initial character description for Marta might have been disappointing, Knives Out showed that the nurse was far more than just a stereotyped character. The detailed writing, alongside de Armas’ fantastic performance, helped develop Marta Cabrera into a three-dimensional character and a popular fan favorite. That being said, it’s highly unlikely that de Armas will return for a Knives Out sequel; director Rian Johnson has explicitly mentioned that he wants future films centered around Detective Blanc’s adventures, which will consist of a revolving cast of characters. Regardless, de Armas’ performance was absolutely riveting, and it’s crystal clear that Marta Cabrera will remain an instantly recognizable name among Knives Out fans.
