BIRDMAN THE CASH MONEY KING DEMANDS RESPEK — SHOOTING THE GODS

DASCHA POLANCOOITNB HAS ITS NEWEST ICON

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This season Dascha Polanco has “busted out” on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black , and look out—this Dominican-born, Brooklyn-raised star will soon be repping her

Latin roots and curvaceous figure everywhere you look.Photos: Dale May | Words: Bret t Wil l iams | S t y l ing: Dar ius Bapt is t

Hair: Cynthia A lvarez | Make-Up: Camara Aunique | Manicure: Omary Gonell @NailFeen

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Within the first few minutes of sitting across from Dascha Polanco, you know this isn’t going to be your typical celebrity interview. She is bigger and bolder than most of your “average” cover-girls—and we mean that both figuratively and lit-erally—and she will be the first to tell you, “Listen dear, I’m not like the rest! I’m here to represent all the girls who thought their weight and their, well, middle class background meant they had limita-tions on who and what they could be. Listen to me, that is all bullshit!” Okay, so that should give you an idea of how a Dascha interview plays out.

In 2013, Netflix debuted its original series Orange is the New Black. The show is set within the fictional Litchfield Penitentiary—a women’s prison—which meant the producers had to cast “inmates” that run the gamut of people who find themselves on the other side of the bricks. They needed diversity—that meant race, creed, color and body type.

Of these talented women, definitely one of the most notable is Dascha Polanco, whose star has rapidly risen along with OITNB (and other projects in which she’s appeared during the show’s run). As inmate Daya Diaz, Dascha has taken on a complicated role: she has arguably the show’s most prominent romantic story arc (which results in an unexpected pregnancy), a complicated relationship with her fellow inmate mother, and, to end the most recent season, a cliffhanger that puts her in a dangerous position.

You’d think that such a tricky role would be filled by a solid veteran presence, someone with a proven track record of experience that goes along with her talent. Dascha clearly has the acting chops for the role—but her IMDb profile is noticeably shorter than many in similar positions.

That’s mostly because, until only a few years ago, Dascha wasn’t confident enough to pursue her acting aspirations, worried that her body type

would keep her from landing the roles she felt she had the talent to play.

“Growing up as a little girl, this is always what I’ve wanted to do,” says Dascha. “I just have not had maybe the support or the belief in myself and maybe the security that I can reach this dream of mine. So acting was my imagination. It was never realistic to me.

“My insecurities came physically, like being fat. So all my life I’m like ‘how can I be an actress when on TV, I don’t see anybody that’s like curvaceous or anybody that’s really fat or that looks like me?’ I’m in the bathroom at the age of fifth grade trying to hold my stomach saying ‘I wanna cut my stomach off, why can’t I be like this person’ or, my uniform doesn’t fit the same everybody else’s because my uniform was shorter in the back. I didn’t realize that’s because I’ve always had a bottom as opposed to my best friend that was like a stick. So her uniform fit to

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her knees, not mine! Mine was the only one that was up in the back and long in the front. The idea of “uniform” I could never relate to because I never looked the same as everybody else.”

So instead of pursuing her dream, Dascha earned a degree in psychology at Hunter College and then worked in hospital adminis-tration. But she never let her imagination die. Lucky for us, she beat her insecurities and got back into performing. Success followed.

Presently, when it comes to credits, Dascha’s are quality not quantity. After two small TV appearances, she was cast in OITNB in 2012 and the indie film Gimme Shelter, which gave her the opportunity to work with Hollywood stalwarts James Earl Jones and Rosario Dawson in her very first film role. Next came The Cobbler, with big names Adam Sandler and Dustin Hoffman. Then, in perhaps the biggest role of her career, Dascha was cast in David O. Russell’s Joy as Jackie, the best friend of the title character, who was played by Oscar-winner

Jennifer Lawrence. The star-studded cast also featured Bradley Cooper and the legendary Robert De Niro.

Acting with such established co-stars brings everything full circle for Dascha. “For me I think it’s a moment of validation,” she says. “Being in a scene with a presence like Robert De Niro, Jennifer Lawrence or Bradley Cooper—you know even Method Man—these were people that I grew up watching, listening to, that I never ever thought I would be next to. So in that moment, although I suppress it, when I go back to the room after I’m done working it’s very emotional, it’s very intense, it’s very gratify-ing. It’s that moment where I realize that this is what I’m supposed to do. I think I get respect from that, because when I speak to someone like Mr. Robert De Niro, who’s very selective and very exclusive and he approaches you and he embraces you it’s because he understands you’re there for the purpose of what you love to do. And you respect him as a person, you

respect him as an actor, and what he has done, and you’re just there to allow that to be a part of your own personal experience.”

But her path to Joy wasn’t always a clear or comfortable one. Even though her star was already rising, old feelings were hard to put completely aside. “I had to meet with him [direc-tor David O. Russell] here in NYC,” she says, thinking back to the final round of auditions. “It was raining and I was in an Uber and I felt so fat. I was thinking ‘oh my God these people are gonna see me now! At least before I was on camera and I could hide it and now they’re gonna see me in person.’”

But this time wouldn’t be like the past. “I was like, ‘you know what? I can’t do anything about it now. It’s two of us down for the role….and they need somebody from Brooklyn wit a Brooklyn accent honey,” she says, breaking effortlessly into the old neighborhood gab. “Go out there and show ‘em what you got. And I went and I did it. Now I’m his Gold Chicken

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Nugget, honey (the director’s nickname for her]. Now David O. Russell is my friend.”

Now, it’s difficult to imagine the powerhouse actress as someone with any insecurities. She speaks measuredly, to be sure—but there are the authentic moments when she becomes excited and the old Brooklyn in her comes tumbling out, calling you ‘honey’ and spitting out words at a mile-a-minute pace, alternately smiling and brash and coquettish and quiet, almost holding back each thing she says so you have to hang on every word.

Still, some of Dascha’s strong persona is actually a careful calculation, yet another role she plays. “People always say ‘you always seem so confident,’ she says. “This is a formula. When I’m in a place, a social gathering, I never allow them to know that I feel insecure. Whatever I’m wearing—that’s why I love fashion. That’s my armor, my protection. You may think I’m insecure darling, but you see I’m not. And once I go home it’s like ‘oh my gawd,’ and I gotta take everything I have off. Ah, gimme that burger and that batta!”

After all is said and done, though, she realizes that she acts for more than just herself. She needs to rep, as much as possible, for the Latinas and bigger girls who haven’t been confident enough to jump for opportunities as she has. “I realized something about weight and me: It’s very internal. Yes, you dis-place it because you’re influenced by a lot of your surroundings—obviously your environment has a big big thing to do with it. But I realize the audience that I have now, how much they need to view people like me in front of a camera and in a photoshoot, on the front of a magazine, and I realize that that’s what I needed. Being able to have that influence, even though I’m still growing and this is all a process and I’m still learning myself—you know what, you have a great personality, (so people say) and that shines through everything. I’m 30 now, I’m not 10, and some people are built some ways, some people are not, you know this difference is your uniqueness and this is taking you to where you’re at.

“I’m trying to do the same way you have a size zero individual on Vogue looking fantastic. You can have somebody that’s a regular size—cause I’m not a plus size, so I don’t fit into the plus size, I don’t fit into the petite, I’m right in the middle. I range from eight to 12, this has been my life strug-gle. I’m either the eight, when I’m the biggest, I’m a 12. We too can be there, we too are talented, we too can be sexy or whatever, we too can be ath-letic. We too can be a CEO, we can be as equal as anyone has been for years. That’s whole method of working, of thinking.”

Maybe mainstream America (and media compa-nies) are finally accepting the fact that not every-one needs to look like the cookie-cutter Hollywood type when it comes to casting leading men and women. When you have the undisputed queen of pop culture, Beyonce, serving as a mouthpiece for women of color and pop/retrofunk R&B artist Blood Orange opening one of the most talked about records of the summer, Freetown Sound, with an ode to women of all sizes and colors and the statement “right now there are a million girls just waiting to see someone who looks like them,” it’s clear that the old standards are breaking down. And now, after the preconceptions of others held her out and even her own insecurities kept her in the background, we have Dascha Polanco, step-ping boldly into the limelight as a new icon. UI

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