Jennifer Lopez once had her eye on the lead role in the 1996 film version of the musical Evita.
“I went to audition for ‘Evita’ for [director] Alan Parker,” Lopez shared on Wednesday night during a Q&A session following a screening of her new movie musical Kiss of the Spider Woman. “I had been practicing for weeks and I sing my heart out and he goes, ‘You’re amazing. You know Madonna has the part, right?’”
Lopez laughed as she recalled the moment: “I said, ‘OK, bye-bye. Nice to meet you.’”
Now, Lopez finally gets her chance to shine in a film musical, starring in Bill Condon’s cinematic adaptation of Kiss of the Spider Woman, alongside Tonatiuh and Diego Luna.
In the film, Lopez portrays Ingrid Luna, a screen icon best known for playing a mysterious spider woman who kills her lovers with a kiss. Set in 1981 during Argentina’s Dirty War, the story follows Luis Molina (played by Tonatiuh), a gay window dresser imprisoned for his sexuality, who escapes the harsh realities of prison life by imagining scenes from Ingrid’s films. While incarcerated, he forms an unlikely friendship with fellow inmate and political prisoner Valentin Arregui (played by Luna).
Lopez revealed that her desire to perform in a musical dates back to childhood, when she first saw West Side Story on TV in her family's modest Bronx home. She also recalled auditioning in the past for movie musicals like Chicago and Nine. In 2016, she was attached to star in a live NBC production of Bye Bye Birdie, though the project never came to fruition.
Discussing the shoot, Lopez remembered director Bill Condon—who also adapted the screenplay—telling her that the film’s large musical numbers would be shot in a single take. “I was like, ‘We’ll do some coverage?’” she recounted. “He was like, ‘Nope, no coverage.’ I was like, ‘Fuck me! I better get it right then.’ Like halfway through the take it’s going perfectly and then you trip on your dress or whatever so it’s like, maybe we start over. It was challenging. It was challenging in that way, time wise, as independent films can be, right? It’s the time, it’s the prep, it’s the, you know, budget. All of it were constraints for us.”
She added, “But we put our heart and soul into it and we rehearsed like crazy for the time that we had and it was a beautiful thing and again, I’m living my childhood dreams.”
Tonatiuh introduced the screening before heading out to catch a flight back to New York for another professional engagement. Lopez was greeted with a standing ovation when she appeared on stage for the Q&A.
