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Nicolas Cage and Karen Rodriguez in Spider-Noir

Published May 29, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

Perri Nemiroff is the 2025 Press Award winner at the ICG Publicists Awards.

She's the senior producer at Collider where she hosts and produces the interview series, Collider Ladies Night, a show geared towards highlighting the need-to-know female voices in film and television.

On top of that, Perri frequently moderates post-screening Q&As and panels at film festivals and conventions including San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic Con, and can be seen on the big screen in the Noovie pre-show segment, Close-up with Perri Nemiroff. She’s also a Top Critic on Rotten Tomatoes, a proud member of the Critics Choice Association and is a Gold Derby Expert.

Perri splits her time between Los Angeles and New York. Wherever the film and television coverage takes her, she goes!

Karen Rodriguez has appeared on a handful of popular shows, but in just a few years, she’s found herself right smack in the middle of two of the biggest hits as a series regular. First came Netflix’s The Hunting Wives, the series adaptation of May Cobb’s hugely popular novel. Whereas headliners like Brittany Snow and Malin Akerman are leaning into the extremes of the characters' situation — and to great effect — Rodriguez tackles the task of serving as the show’s grounded heart, Deputy Wanda Salazar. Rodriguez made such a big impression doing that that she was made a series regular for the second season, which is due out in the fall.

While you wait for more Hunting Wives, you can catch Rodriguez in one of the most highly anticipated new superhero projects of 2026, Prime Video’s Spider-Noir. Rodriguez stars opposite Nicolas Cage’s Ben Reilly as Janet Ruiz, his trusty secretary and fellow investigator. Ben may be the one with the superpowers, fighting crime in New York City as The Spider, but it’s Janet's intuition that helps them connect with clients, often sparking the groundbreaking level of understanding needed to crack a case.

With all eight episodes of Spider-Noir now available to stream on Prime Video, in Black & White and also True-Hue color, Rodriguez visited the Collider Ladies Night studio to revisit her journey to Netflix, discuss what it was like scoring her very first series regular role in Spider-Noir, and to dig into how Janet is Reilly Investigations secret weapon.

‘Spider-Noir’ Was Do or Die for Karen Rodriguez

"I didn't really have a lot of time to think about it, and thank god for that."

As though taking on your first series regular role isn’t high-pressure enough, Rodriguez’s first series regular opportunity would have her working with beloved IP and acting opposite an industry legend, Nicolas Cage. While Rodriguez first auditioned for Janet four months in advance, she didn’t find out the role was hers until a mere week before production began. While one might think that tight turnaround would up the pressure tenfold, Rodriguez looked at jumping in feet first as a blessing.

“It was just kind of do or die. I didn't really have a lot of time to think about it, and thank god for that. I think it just made me focus on the work and making sure that I was gonna keep Nicolas Cage on his toes as much as I could, because Janet does — not because I want to but because Janet does. And again, this process of relinquishing myself to the givens of the way that I got this job and knowing that I was really enough. Honestly, Salazar and Janet, the way I got both of those jobs really mirrors each other, this idea of, like, I was found really late, but it was like, ‘That's the person.’”

Showrunner Oren Uziel and the rest of the team were spot-on with Rodriguez’s casting. Not only does she nail the noir style and tone, and command the screen opposite a heavy hitter like Cage, but she also turns Janet into Spider-Noir’s ray of light.

Why Is Janet So Loyal to Ben?

"It's rare for somebody to say, I see your capability."

Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly holding The Spider mask in his hands in Spider-Noir

Janet isn’t just a colleague for Ben. Within mere minutes of seeing the two characters on screen together, it’s abundantly clear that there’s history between them, they love doing this type of work together, and they also care deeply about one another. In fact, that happens so fast it gives Spider-Noir a beating heart right from the start.

“My biggest question when I got the part was, why does she stay? What is it about this position and this person? Because I could see it in the writing. She loves him and she loves this job, but she loves this job with him. Why? And I very quickly realized, and this was my engine for the entirety of her character and him, there's something about being a woman in the 1930s, like, what options does she have? She's the smartest person in the room, but it takes community to allow you to expand completely in yourself.”

Rodriguez paused to insist, “Don’t get me wrong, Janet doesn't need anybody. She's authentically herself, and I think she was going to do that no matter where she went.” But, finding someone who sees you and encourages you to seize your potential is a game changer. That's what Janet has in Ben. Rodriguez continued:

“She found a person that says, ‘You are the smartest person in the room. Yeah, you're my secretary, but what should we do?’ That value and that reflection and that care, we need that. We need people who do that for us. For Janet, I think she knows the world that she traverses, and it's rare. It's rare for somebody to say, ‘I see your capability, and not just your potential, but who you are, and have at it!’ And she's like, ‘Yes!’”

Janet doesn’t just have a next-level relationship with Ben. She’s a true people person. She has the ability to connect with just about everyone, making the character a very effective core of Spider-Noir.

"f you excavate long enough, there's always gonna be a human reason for people's actions."

Wondering where this ability came from? So was I! And it turns out, it’s something Rodriguez had thought through thoroughly. She began:

“One of the challenges of getting the part was that I'd never done a period piece, and it felt very far away, so I was like, ‘How could I bring her to me?’ In the research that I did, they just went through World War I in the early 1910s, then in 1918, there's the influenza pandemic. Then they have a brief period of The Roaring Twenties, then the 1929 crash, Great Depression, and now we're in 1933 and just six years later is the rise of Hitler, so we're gonna go into World War II, and I thought, ‘Gosh, since she was a child, all she's known is tumultuousness.’ For a person like Janet, and there are many people like this, the human spirit is always gonna shine through. It's always gonna be resilient. It's always gonna be resourceful.”

Rodriguez took that thought and applied it to how Janet operates within her own family:

“She mentions in that episode that all three of her brothers went to war, and so I thought, what must that have been like to stay at home with her mom and watch those brothers leave? And, of course, helping her mom and her dad. So there's always been a helping factor to Janet, a fixing factor to Janet, a resourcefulness to her, and it's made her observant of what people need, who people are. Now, as an adult, I think she takes it as there's a curiosity, because if you excavate long enough, there's always gonna be a human reason for people's actions, no matter how malicious it is. We're always dealing with, like, cheating husbands or whatever, but if you excavate long enough, there's a very human reason as to why people do those things.”

In a show with a bunch of characters rocking superpowers, Rodriguez took a moment to emphasize how fulfilling it was to see Spider-Noir highlight the power of a “soft skill” via Janet.

“She's just observant, and I think it makes her an incredibly skillful person to have in your corner. And I also love that it's hyping up soft skills because we're in hustle culture, like assertiveness, and it's like, ‘No, just sit down and listen and reflect people and people hand you the world.’”

Looking for even more on Rodriguez’s experience playing Janet in Spider-Noir, including how she felt about that ending? Be sure to watch her full Collider Ladies Night interview in the video at the top of this article!