Rosie Perez is one Latina who has literally worked hard her whole life to get to the top, overcoming a traumatic childhood and trying to break stereotypes for Latinas in the movie industry. She tells her story in her new memoir “Handbook For An Unpredictable Life,” where she opened up about her feud with Jennifer Lopez and how it all began. Rosie moved to Los Angeles and worked two jobs to put herself through community college when a talent scout for “Soul Train” saw her at a club and brought her to the show. After working there, she got noticed by singer-songwriter Bobby Brown and his manager hired Perez to choreograph Brown’s moves for stage and video.
She became known in the industry, and eventually was cast in Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing.” Soon after that, Keenen Ivory Wayans brought Perez in to choreograph the Fly Girls on the 1990’s series “In Living Color.” Perez saw Jennifer Lopez at a casting call and convinced Wayans to cast her as a fly girl. However, Wayans wasn’t too happy with the idea, calling her “chubby and corny,” and refusing to hire her. But Perez says she stepped in, and finally convinced Wayans to hire the “curvy, heavyset, big-assed beautiful girl” but he told her she had to drop 20 pounds and cut her hair.
A star was born. But within two weeks no one could stand JLo. “All of the girls were coming into my office complaining how she was manipulating wardrobe, makeup, and me, all to her advantage,” Perez wrote in her memoir, saying Lopez thought the girls were just "jealous." Wayans would complain that Lopez “looked fat that week or too clunky in her moves.” Perez worked her hard, resulting in a screaming match where, according to Rosie, JLo dropped her "sweet girl act" and "went off" on Perez like "some ghetto biatch, screaming and pounding her chest."
"You pick on me, me and only me, every f***ing day! Every f***ing day! The Grammy winner reportedly said. "I work my ass off, deliver and you keep pushing me aside, treating me like s***! I know I’m good! I’m better than any of these girls, and you know it." The singer left the show to pursue her acting career after two season, and, according to Perez, Jennifer continued to make “disparaging comments” about her and was surprised when a friendly JLo walked up to her at a night club years later like nothing had happened.
“Jennifer came over to me, smiling, saying hello as if nothing had happened. I should’ve let it go, played it off, too. Instead, I killed her with my biting tongue,” Perez writes without elaborating much. According to the book, Perez says she’s let the feud go, along with a lot of issues from her past.
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