Jane the Virgin ended its spectacular five-season run on The CW this week, and it’s clear that the show’s star, Gina Rodriguez, is feeling all the things. On Wednesday, July 31, just before the grand finale, she posted a lengthy, heartfelt post on Instagram about what the ending meant to her.
She shared a photo of herself wearing a black jacket over a wedding dress—a clue about the happy way the creators decided to end Jane the Virgin. “Wow,” she wrote. “We started shooting the first season of Jane in July 2014. A few days into shooting I turned 30 on set. Yesterday I turned 35. And today is the very last episodes, 99 and 100, airing of Jane the Virgin. Five years. Five years of love, laughter, growth, pain, surprises, deaths, new births and a shit ton of memories.”
“Thank you, Gina, for giving us Jane Villanueva and for all the lessons I have learned through this beautiful character that you portrayed amazingly and to your full potential with your entire heart. No one else could play Jane like you,” one fan wrote in the comments section. Yvonne Orji, known for playing Molly on Issa Rae’s HBO hit Insecure, added, “Amazing!!! AMAZING! 5 glorious years!!”
Gina Rodriguez wasn’t the only person who walked down memory lane before yesterday’s emotional finale. Her co-star, Justin Baldoni, who plays love interest Rafael Solano, posted an interview in which he tears up talking about the impact of getting to work on Jane. Watch it for yourself, above.
“It’s rare to get a chance to be a part of something this beautiful,” he said. “You grow up and you dream about being a performer or being an actor or being a director, and those dreams seem so far away from who you are as a young boy, and then you win the lottery and it happens.”
It’s been less than 48 hours since Gina Rodriguez presented at the Golden Globes, and she’s feeling a little out of sorts as we talk on the phone. “I left the Globes, did press for Jane the Virgin in L.A., jumped on a plane to Miami, got here last night, and then started press at 7 A.M. [for Carmen Sandiego] I don’t even know my name right now!”
It’s a whirlwind schedule, for sure, but also oddly appropriate for someone playing Carmen Sandiego, the fictional globe-trotting “thief with a conscience.” Rodriguez grew up on the game show version of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, now she’s stepping into the mysterious mastermind’s shoes for Netflix’s animated reboot. “I said 1000% yes [to Carmen],” Rodriguez says. “I still can’t believe it.”
Rodriguez credits Carmen with inspiring her to travel and learn new cultures, religions, and languages. “Coming from a low-income family in the hoods of Chicago, I don’t know how much I would have desired to see the world outside of mine if it wasn’t for Carmen,” she says. “[Through the show], I got to travel to Thailand, Ecuador, Panama, Japan, and more when we couldn’t in my household. That’s OK because my parents gave us the tools and education to give us opportunities so we could eventually travel ourselves. And that’s exactly what my sister and I did.”
PHOTO: Netflix
Although Rodriguez can afford to fly anywhere she wants to now, she says it’s the lessons that she learned as a kid that she wants to pass down to the future generations. “I don’t have children yet, but I want one real bad,” she says. “All the men and women who grew up with Carmen are now in their 30s and 40s, so now they get to [introduce] her to their children.”
In the meantime, she says she’s getting feedback from other members of her family, especially her 9-year-old nephew. Before she got engaged to Joe LoCicero last year, for example, her nephew asked when they’d be getting married. “I was like, ‘I don’t know. We discussed it, but I’m going to give him space to ask me,’ and my nephew says, ‘Ask you? Why would he ask you? Women ask the men these days.’”
She says she replied, “‘Oh really? No, sweetheart, it hasn’t been traditional, but it’s really awesome to see a woman who does that.'” Her nephew’s response? “‘Well, women make more money than men.’”
“I was like, ‘Sadly, we’re still fighting for pay equity, so, no, women don’t make more than men,’” Rodriguez continues. “And he goes, ‘My mommy makes more than my daddy, and you make more, so don’t women always make more than men?’”
“I thought, How interesting. He has these women in his life living a different space than we’re used to seeing, and he is being so shaped by that,” she says. “Here I’m thinking I’m only affecting women, when I have my nephew being like, ‘I see you making deals. You’re the CEO of your company.’ So it’s a reflection to young boys that that is what a young woman can be.”
That’s why Rodriguez jumped at the chance to play “this strong, fierce, brave woman” in both the animated and live-action versions. Of the latter, she says she can’t talk about it too much— it’s in the very early stages, but she’s excited to bring Carmen to life.
“I’ve made a lot of projects geared toward older audiences, so to be able to play to this [younger] demographic where I was so inspired and motivated and encouraged to do what I love…those are transformative years,” she says. “If it wasn’t for my education, I probably would never be in the position I’m in.”
Carmen Sandiego premieres on Netflix today, January 18.
The Jane the Virgin actress confirmed to Us Weekly on Tuesday (August 7) that she and actor Joe LoCicero are planning to tie the knot. “I have a very, very special man in my life. I am engaged. You’re the first people that I’ve told,” Rodriguez told the magazine. “It’s wonderful blessings like that, that make me realize that if I have an opportunity to help someone else, I want to.”
She continued, “I am marrying a feminist. I am marrying a man that is incredible and loving and understanding and kind and patient. I’m marrying a really incredible human being. That what it is. I met a human that like, knows he’s a human.”
Us Weekly first reported on July 30 that Rodriguez and LoCicero are engaged; however, neither of them has said anything until now. Rumors of their engagement sparked, though, last month when Rodriguez uploaded a photo of herself rocking what looked like a diamond ring on that finger. The same ring is on display in the photo, below:
Rodriguez and LoCicero met on the set of Jane the Virgin. “He thought I was being nice to him because I am nice to everyone that comes on the show,” she said in May 2017 on Live With Kelly and Ryan. “So he thought I was just being super sweet to him and I thought he was just being sweet on me because I’m the lead.” Their relationship bloomed six months after that, however, when they bumped into each other at the gym.
Gina Rodriguez is an absolute pro at making us cry, from her beautiful speech at the 2015 Golden Globes to countless heartwarming moments on Jane the Virgin. And on Tuesday, she picked up the mantle again when she announced a very special scholarship for an undocumented Latinx student.
Funds for the scholarship come from an unusual place: the budget for Jane the Virgin‘s Emmy promotion. Instead of spending what Rodriguez calls “an insane amount of money” to do a “bizarre dance” to be in the running for an award this year (including putting on campaigning events and providing branded promotional swag), she convinced the show’s network, The CW, to set up a four-year college tuition scholarship for an undocumented Latinx student, The Hollywood Reporterreports.
“Our show has always jumped at any opportunity to help me do something for the Latinx community,” the star tells THR. “So I asked my showrunner, Jennie [Snyder Urman], if we could do something different with the money this year.”
“It’s taboo to talk about the money being spent, but it’s the reality,” Rodriguez continued on the culture of campaigning that goes on in Hollywood. “I think sharing this might inspire other people to do something similar. You can desire recognition and, at the same time, decide to not play in the confines of the game as it’s set up.”
Rodriguez partnered with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles to find the student for the award. THR notes the young woman will be attending Princeton University in the fall.
The decision to make the scholarship go to an undocumented student is consistent with the show’s history of shining a light on the Latinx experience of living in the United States. Since its first season, Jane the Virgin has addressed how immigration issues impact the show’s central family, most notably a storyline about Jane’s grandmother Alba, who seeks citizenship after being in the country for 40 years without documentation.
Paying off student debt is a problem Rodriguez has been public about facing herself. In 2017, she revealed it took her 11 years after graduating to pay off the college loans she’d taken out to attend New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. (She posted her final payment the day she was nominated for her second Golden Globe Award, according to People.)
And while she’s not following the traditional route of campaigning for an Emmy, Rodriguez is still in the running for the award in September. Jane the Virgin‘s fifth season will premiere on The CW in January 2019.
The series, potentially titled Femme, “follows four millennial women from different walks of life who become unlikely friends and fierce allies after meeting online in a secret feminist social media group,” according to Variety. “They form a sisterhood army in the real world to support each other through both serious and humorous crises and to help other women in need.”
Rodriguez and her production company will executive-produce the show for the CW as part of Rodriguez’s deal with CBS. To make the news even better, two writers from the smart, hilarious show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, will write and produce the show. (Their other credits include Cougar Town and One Tree Hill, so yeah, this is set up to be SO good.)
Lest we think that’s Rodriguez’s only project, she currently has two other shows in the works with CBS and the CW: She’s producing a drama called Have Mercy, which follows a Latina doctor who immigrates to Miami and can no longer practice, so she opens clinic in her apartment to help the community. The other is a dramedy called Illegal, based on the life of co-executive producer and writer Rafael Agustin. The show is about an American high school student who finds out he is undocumented. And, in April, Rodriguez was also confirmed to be working with Netflix to voice the title character of the 1990s classic reboot of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?.
It looks like we’re about to see a whole lot coming from Rodriguez as she works to give more opportunities to female writers, producers, and actresses—and we are so here for all of it.
