Daphne Rubin-Vega Takes It to New Heights
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If you were casting the film version of a beloved Broadway musical and you needed somebody with major acting, singing, and dancing chops to expand a role—and you needed that somebody to not only hold her own in a megawatt ensemble cast but also to somehow personify central themes of the story—you might hope, pray even, that Daphne Rubin-Vega would audition for the part.
Rubin-Vega is a Broadway veteran who got her big break (and a Tony nomination) playing Mimi Marquez in the original production of Rent. She has since played numerous pivotal roles onstage, on television series, and in films (she starred in the stage production and in the film adaptation of Jack Goes Boating with Philip Seymour Hoffman and was nominated for another Tony for her role in the play Anna in the Tropics), while simultaneously continuing a career as a singer-songwriter, which she began in her teens as the lead singer in a Latin freestyle group called Pajama Party.
She did audition for In the Heights (even though everyone in the production knew and admired her work), and she landed the role of the salon owner Daniela in the new film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Tony-winning musical, which premieres June 10 in theaters and on HBO Max.
“In a way, she’s the most underappreciated star in our whole group,” said the film’s director, Jon M. Chu. “She has led the way for so many years for the community, for the world, for Broadway. I have always considered her an icon, but I didn’t realize how much she meant to everybody else until I noticed that every time I brought up her name, everyone was like, ‘You got Daphne? Yes!’”
The beauty salon is a central gathering place for In the Heights’s main characters, and Daniela is its outspoken proprietor. “I love her, because there is a Daniela in all of our lives,” Rubin-Vega says. “You go to her when you need a pep talk, when you need counsel, when you need to hear the truth. She’s very New York. She laughs a little too loud and, you know, she will say excuse me, but if you don’t move out her way she’ll say ‘Excuse me’ for you. But she’s also a protector and terribly kind.”
Her neighborhood is going through gentrification, and Daniela’s salon has been priced out of its lease. As the film unfolds, she prepares to move the business from Washington Heights to the Bronx. “She is that person who, of course, would rather not move, but she’s not going to complain or feel bad about it,” Rubin-Vega says. “She’s going to just make the best of it and do what she has to do.” That subject, especially Daniela’s resilience in the face of change, resonated for Rubin-Vega. “We all immigrated from somewhere at some point,” she says. “My mother left Panama and came to this country when she was a young woman. She wrote a letter home to her family that said, ‘It’s been a year since I left everything that I knew and loved, and I am still praying that it was not for nothing—that there is a reason why I did this.’ It’s kind of moving to say that now, because if she hadn’t done that, I would not be here talking to you about this. So many of us think, ‘What would have happened if I hadn’t moved, if I hadn’t left Panama, if my mother hadn’t made those choices for me?’”
Rubin-Vega has worked with many of the In the Heights cast and creators in the past, including Jimmy Smits, with whom she starred in Anna in the Tropics, and Hudes, in whose play Daphne’s Dive and musical Miss You Like Hell she played starring roles. She even made a contribution to the original Broadway production of In the Heights, recording the voice of a DJ heard at the beginning of the musical.
But having familiar faces around did not mean Rubin-Vega felt relaxed during filming. “Looking at all the major talent on set, I kept thinking to myself, ‘I really need to bring my A game.’” Then she laughs. “But we all felt that way on this project. During the shoot, even Lin and Jon kept saying to each other—half serious—‘Don’t fuck this up.’”
Photographer: Allie Holloway, Fashion Stylist: Cat Pope, Hair by Tomo Nakajima at Sally Hershberger, Makeup by Rebecca Restrepo at TraceyMattingly.com, Deputy Visuals Director: Fiona Lennon
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