Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez arrive to their interview at the Redbury Hotel full of confidence, and with good reason. The amateur actors have been receiving nothing but praise for their work in Sean Baker’s micro-indie Tangerine, in which both Rodriguez and Taylor play prostitutes on the notorious Santa Monica and Highland junction of Los Angeles. With two beautiful and poignant performances, it’s hard to believe that this is their first time on screen. Mya Taylor, both in the film and in person, is the quiet leader of the group. She speaks softly and carries herself with poise. Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, on the other hand, is more of the sharp-tongued firecracker, I notice her subtly tap her acrylic nails together while forming her responses. Both women are fiercely strong, there’s no denying that, and during our interview they talk about the struggles of being trans women of color, the idea of falling in love, and the one scene they almost didn’t shoot. We begin:

 

As first time actors, were you nervous signing on to this project?

MT: I’m pretty confident in everything that I do, I’m not nervous before interviews of anything… No, you know what? That’s a lie.

Laughter

KR: Thank God, ’cause girl! I was gonna be like, ‘I don’t know about you…’

MT: I just did another movie the week before last and I was nervous not about the performance, but about the voice of the character because she has a very [raises her voice] “distinct voice like this,” and I had to talk like that the whole film. I was very nervous because I don’t sound like that, my voice is much lower and sexier.

Kiki, is acting what you want to do now?

KR:  I did musical theater for one semester in college while majoring in psychology. I’ve always had an acting bug, but I didn’t want to tell anybody about it. [Getting cast in Tangerine] I was like, ‘Stuff like this doesn’t happen every day.’ I didn’t believe it. We had filmed the whole movie and got paid and I was like ‘Ashton Kutcher is somewhere.’

Laughter

As an Angelino, the locations (Santa Monica & Highland) in the film were perfect.

KR: Yeah, this is the area where some of the transgender community is located and where they might be living. Life really imitates art as far as [the location]. It was as realistic as Sean [Baker, director] could get.

MT: We’ve been around all of those people for quite some time, so it really wasn’t hard to “act like the scenery.” It was very important for many reasons. I guess I have to throw this in if you know the stories about transgender street workers– and that’s what most of that area consists of– and me personally, I had applied for 186 jobs in one month and I did 26-27 interviews that month, 3 a day. I did not get one job, and I actually caught people discriminating against me just because I’m trans. Not so much because of the way I look of course [coyly smiles], but to see my ID and still see that it says Jeremiah instead of Mya. It leads to a lot of transgender girls doing street work, and that’s what I want people to see in this movie. It’s very, very serious.

Tangerine is coming at a perfect time, with Orange is the New Black’s Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner making major headway in the trans community. What do you want people to feel as they leave the theater?

MT: I want people who are either trans or who can just relate to us, to know that they’re not alone.

KR: I want them to get an understanding of the trans community and a small part of who we are, and a realization of what some people go through. Another thing I hope people get from it is if they see something they don’t like, they’ll change it. It’s a blessing to not only be trans but be trans and a minority and have the opportunity to show people a different side of the world, our life from that point of view!

MT: And it’s very important for that area. That area is very… iconic! I’ve seen so many people come and go, fighting for their lives and even a few people get killed. It makes you wonder, ‘Why were they out here doing this?’ I just told you why.

Do the other people in the film actually work in that area?

MT: Every person that appeared in the film wasn’t necessarily a sex worker. We’re not even sex workers. But, there were a few, I’m not going to say any names.

What were your thoughts on seeing the completed film?

MT: I thought it was funny.

KR: I thought it was beautifully edited and shot. When you have that much passion, you see why people do the things they do. It really impresses me that people have that much talent.

This was one of the most buzzed-about films at Sundance, did you have any expectations about its success?

MT: Haha, no not at all! I thought I was just going to be doing just a regular project, I had no idea that it was going to be this. [Before I was cast] I was sitting in the courtyard and I saw Sean and Chris Bergoch [co-writer/co-producer] approach many other people other than me and they we being so shady and so mean, I was like, ‘Who the… are you?’ Then they came over to me and I was very sweet to him because I’m naturally a very sweet person, and I feel like being sweet gets you a long way!

Laughter  

And here I am today. Sucks for [the other girls].

The film is an interesting look at love vs lust in Los Angeles…

KR: There’s an interesting dynamic of love in the trans community, and when you’re in the area surrounding the film, people there have an interesting idea of love. I’m a goodie-goodie two shoes now, but being younger and dealing with love and being trans, I had guys that didn’t know what to do. There was gay, straight, but then what do we do with you [trans]? They’d say, ‘I don’t want to hold your hand, that’s too gay. I don’t want to kiss you, that’s too gay.’ I thought that doing “other things” must be love. One day I talked back to myself about what I was doing and thought that didn’t sound right. I shouldn’t be getting treated that way. I should be getting treated the way they would treat anybody else. That’s what changed my mindset and I became the  goodie-goodie two shoes I am now. I took out all my piercings, I never had tattoos. [Love] is a weird experience for girls like us.

Can you talk about the final scene? That must have been hard to do.

MT: You guys are so cruel.

Laughter

Sean brought the idea to us and immediately we said no because I don’t come out of my 28-inch hair.

KR: We don’t come out of our “hair-acture.”

MT: Then I thought about it, and knew it would be really, really sweet because she’s supposed to be my best friend and she is mine. This [pointing to Kiki] is my bitch. If she fights, I fight, and that’s how we have been.

KR: I didn’t complain about nothing the whole time until that scene came. [On set ] I wanted everybody to be quiet and nobody to see. But I knew I had to be a trooper. I was so not ready for it, for any of that scene. However, it shows that when people go through any act of unkindness it can bring people back together because there’s always that closeness [between friends].

Your characters are so strong throughout all of their hardships. Are there similarities between them and you?

MT: When you’re going through everything that these girls are going through in the film, you have to be positive. All the time. I personally had a pretty hard life ever since I was 18 all the way up to 23, and I’m 24 now. I just feel like you have to have fun, you can’t let [negativity] get the best of you. All of the personality that’s inside the movie is actually how we are. It’s just for this interview, you have to present yourself in a certain way, haha.

KR: When people live a certain lifestyle like the girls in the film, full of negativity, you have to have humor. [You don’t need anything] but a smile. By being an ostracized person, you have nothing but to make joy out of what you want to do.

For our review of Tangerine, click here.