Adria Arjona Reflects on Her Breakout Year: ‘These Directors Gave Me No Limitations’

How busy has 2024 been for actress Adria Arjona? She graciously chatted with IndieWire from the airport, right before a recent flight. “It’s the only time where I can kind of have a second,” she said, sheepishly. 

While the actress became a bonafide star-to-watch via a breadth of projects over the years, from “6 Underground” to “Father of the Bride” and “Andor,” Arjona recently achieved a new level of success as the romantic lead opposite Glen Powell (another 2024 breakout) in Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man.”

What followed the inventive Netflix rom-com of the summer was a standout role in Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut “Blink Twice,” and now the opportunity to star and produce indie dramedy “Los Frikis,” in which she plays nurse to a group of youths in 1991 Cuba, who purposefully injected themselves with HIV in order to escape poverty by entering a government-run treatment home. And, yes, the film is based on a true story.

As she has been promoting all three films throughout the year, Arjona has managed to keep the momentum going on the acting front, finishing up the final season of “Andor,” shooting “Splitsville” with the Cannes-winning filmmaking duo behind “The Climb,” starring in the highly-anticipated comic book series adaptation “Criminal” coming to Prime Video, and taking on action-horror project “Onslaught” directed by Adam Wingard. 

The busy schedule has been a comfort to the actress as she gains more attention for her string of notable films. “It’s so nerve-wracking when you release a project. It’s so exposing. You spend so much time with these characters and telling the stories, and you really fall in love with the project, and then you go to the next thing,” said Arjona. “When something comes out, you’re like, ‘Are people liking it? Do they like it? Are they having fun with it as much as I had fun making it?’ So it feels good to be on another project where I don’t think about that as much.”

Though it was “Hit Man” that set her on this path, the actress said “‘Los Frikis’ changed my life completely.” She actually shot the Falling Forward Films release, directed by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz, before the Kravitz and Linklater movies.

It also happens to be the first film Arjona has ever produced, “because Tyler and Michael asked me to join them in the creative process. So by doing so, they gave me all this confidence and taught me so much on set, and what was important, what wasn’t important,” she said. “And then, as an actress as well, they were so supportive and they just gave me the confidence that I needed, that the industry didn’t give me, in a way. Because as a Latin American actress, I’m constantly trying to prove myself, ‘I could do this’ and ‘I could do that. Please just give me a shot.’ And Tyler and Michael really helped me get through that.”

Michael Schwartz, Adria Arjona, and Tyler Nilson attend the premiere of ‘Los Frikis’ during the 41st Miami Film FestivalSergi Alexander/Getty Images

What first sold her on accepting the role of Maria in “Los Frikis” was how the film dives into a part of Latin American history she did not know actually happened. “We see so many different Latin American stories, but for some reason they keep feeling redundant. We keep telling the same stories or seeing the same characters,” she said.

Furthermore, Arjona was intrigued by Nilson and Schwartz’s approach toward casting the rest of the film. “They were like, ‘We want to bring 20 actors from Cuba.’ And I was like, ‘That’s an impossible task,'” she said. “It took us months and months, but Tyler and Michael never gave up. They’re like, ‘This movie needs to be authentic, needs to feel real, needs to feel raw. The only way we can tell it is through them, and by them.’ ​​And we did it.”

Though the performer, being of Puerto Rican and Guatemalan descent, hired a speech coach, an acting coach, and a movement coach, all to nail down the Cuban accent and mannerisms, the thing that served Arjona’s performance most was being around her costars. “The second that I met all the Cuban actors, I fired everybody,” she joked. “They really just helped me get this accent right, get the behavior right.”

During production in the Dominican Republic, “We all lived together. We would all ride together. There was never a separation of ‘You’re the producer, you’re the actress that comes from the U.S., and these are the Cubans’ at all,” said Arjona. “When it came to treatment too, between the directors and everybody else, it was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t my movie.’ If anything, the stars of this movie are Eros [de la Puente] and Hector [Medina].”

From the beginning, the experience of making “Los Frikis” began to mirror the film’s story, in terms of the Cuban actors entering a new environment that offered them resources and freedoms they had not considered before. “When they first got to Santo Domingo, they had never been outside of their country. A lot of them are really young. We all lived in one hotel, and I took it upon myself. I was like, ‘They have to have a good experience in their first Hollywood movie,’ one,” she said. “And two, ‘They’re probably really scared and they’re going through all sorts of emotions of anger, and fear, realizing how little they actually have been living with.'”

“So I sort of became their assistant. I became their Maria. Anything that they needed. ‘I need toothpaste, I need this. Can we go to the supermarket? Can we go here? Can we go eat?’ Everything was through me,” she said. “It was really beautiful, because these kids were discovering freedom for the first time outside of their country. And in the story, they’re discovering freedom inside their own country. So it was really interesting to see that form.”

‘Los Frikis’ stars Adria Arjona (center) and Eros de la Puente (center right) with the rest of the castNew Slate Films / Courtesy Everett Collection

Arjona compares filmmaking to summer camp: “If you were a part of it, you were part of it, but if you weren’t there, then you don’t kind of get it.” But more than most projects, “Los Frikis” gave her a new perspective.

“There’s something about freedom and expression that ‘Los Frikis’ gave me, of ‘Why do we care so much about these tiny little things, or what people think, or even the things that we wear?’ A lot of the materialism got kind of knocked out,” the actress said. To get into character, Arjona would often go barefoot. “I did my own hair and makeup. I got dressed like Maria every day. I just put saltwater in my hair. There was a liberation. And I felt very myself,” she said. “I’m Puerto Rican. I was by the beach. I had no limitations, because these directors gave me no limitations. They’re like, ‘She’s you. Now, go for it.’ So I felt really free, and I always looked for that feeling.”

That kind of professional autonomy was something Arjona was able to carry over into “Hit Man,” which has been her biggest role to date. “Rick asked me to write with him, and allowed me to have a seat at the table, and really listen to my ideas, and really picked my brain, and really made me believe that, ‘Oh, wait, I do have this producer brain, and maybe I can write,’” she said of Linklater. “The directors that I worked with in these past couple of years have given me ownership for the first time of my characters. And it’s exciting that I finally have ownership. People are like, ‘Oh, oh, these are fun.’ So that’s been really a big relief, and yeah, I definitely owe them a lot.”

Arjona’s successful year has made her think deeper about how she contributes to Latina representation as well. “I’m not perfect, so I can’t be like, ‘I’m going to represent Latin American women, and I’m the definition of Latin American women.’ I’m not, nor do they probably want me to be,” said the actress. “I want to showcase different versions of what a Latin American woman can be. So those three stereotypes that we’re so used to seeing a Latin American woman as, are disheveled by all these quirky, weird characters that I’m playing. That’s my role in it.”

Adria Arjona in ‘Los Frikis’New Slate Films / Courtesy Everett Collection

And coming off of three well-regarded projects, Arjona has more confidence in what she brings to the table, and a willingness to challenge herself even more in whatever she does next. “I have this little saying that I tell myself all the time. It’s like, ‘Fail, fail better. Never fear or never settle.’ So I’m like, ‘Alright, I’m going to fail.’ And if you ask for help, and if you train and put your ego to the side, and just fucking fail, at some point you’re going to get it right,” she said.

And if the question “Can you do that?” pops up, her response is easy: “’Yeah, I can do it. Of course I can do it’ And then I’m like, ‘How the fuck am I going to do it?,’” she said with a laugh. “And then you just jump.”

“Los Frikis,” a Falling Forward Films release, is now in select theaters nationwide.