In honor of National Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month which comes to an end October 15, OppNet is highlighting three trailblazers who have crafted careers centered on the amplification and representation of the diverse community of Latinx voices in film, television, and literature.
Julissa Calderon
Actress & Producer
Julissa Calderon is a multi-talented Afro-Latinx actress and producer. Though she most recently starred in the Netflix series Gentefied as a queer activist who organizes her community to fight gentrification, Julissa first rose to internet fame when she worked at Buzzfeed producing educational and comedic content highlighting Latinx communities. Julissa regularly wrote, directed, and starred in videos under the media giant’s Pero Like umbrella, quickly becoming a noticeable fixture in viral clips featuring funny skits about Saturday morning cleaning rituals in Dominican households, to serious discussions on issues such as colorism, to cultural celebrations featuring the variety of foods in the Latinx community.
Originally from New York but raised in Miami, Julissa attended the University of Florida before moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting. She had a small role on the ABC show Revenge before landing at Buzzfeed. In addition to her role on Gentefied, Julissa has also launched her own YouTube channel, and regularly speaks at college campuses around the nation, and she has been featured in a number of publications and on podcasts discussing the importance of inclusivity and representation in Hollywood. Earlier this year, Julissa was named one of Variety’s “10 Latinxs to Watch.”
Osmany “Oz” Rodriguez
Director & Producer
It’s hard to miss Osmany “Oz” Rodriguez’s work. From Funny or Die, to Saturday Night Live, the Emmy Award-winning producer has cut his teeth writing sketches for some of the most famed comedy productions. Earlier this year, Oz directed the popular 30Rock reunion special during quarantine featuring comedians Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan, among others. Most recently, Oz directed the Netflix original film Vampires Vs. the Bronx, a coming-of-age horror-comedy starring a group of friends—all of Latinx and Black descent—trying to save their favorite bodega from an increasingly gentrifying neighborhood, discovering a more sinister source of the changing storefronts on their block.
Originally from the Dominican Republic, Oz has described himself as obsessed with movies and how they are made. Though he began watching SNL from an early age, he did not anticipate going into comedy. However, while attending the Los Angeles Film School, he met a group of friends with whom he would ultimately form a sketch group, Honor Student, leading him into the genre that would come to define his career. Upon graduation from film school, he went to work for TBS’s Super Deluxe comedy studio, before moving on to Funny or Die where he created viral shorts such as “The Wire: The Musical.” His big break came when he was asked to join SNL as a sketch director, creating hit shorts such as “The Jay-Z Story” and “A Thanksgiving Miracle.” In addition to SNL, Oz has also been working on the second season of “A.P. Bio,” a show streaming on the NBC platform Peacock.
Carmen Maria Machado
Author, Essayist & Critic
Carmen Maria Machado was already a noted essayist and critic when her debut story collection “Her Body and other Parties” was listed as a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award, launching her to the top of the literary world. Her writing, typically dark—stradling the thin line between horror and science fiction—has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies. Carmen has discussed the importance of education in her family, citing the influence of her grandfather’s migration from Cuba to the U.S. to pursue his bachelor’s degree—taking ten years to finish as he simultaneously learned English, worked, and served in the Korean War. Her father moved the family to outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania after earning his doctorate, where Carmen grew up and developed a fondness for literature. She has named Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude which she read at 15 years old as especially influential, and considers his use of magical realism a foundation for her own style of writing.
Carmen graduated from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop with a master’s of fine arts. She is the 2019 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, one of several notable fellowships, residencies and awards she has received. Earlier this year, she also published a six-issue comic for DC Comics called The Low, Low, Woods about two best friends in a small town who lose their memories as a result of a mysterious illness. A longtime Philadelphia resident, Carmen is currently a writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania.
