In Aida Rodriguez’s “Fighting Words,” She’s a Lover and a Fighter for Latinx Culture in Hollywood
Photograph by Courtesy of HBO Max.
“I capitalize a lot on talking about being Puerto Rican and Dominican, so it was very important to me that I gave back to the community,” shared Aida Rodriguez while onstage in early November following a New York screening of her latest HBO Max comedy special Fighting Words. At HBO’s headquarters at Hudson Yards, the bold and outspoken DominiRican comic was joined by Fighting Words co-director Nadia Hallgren (Emmy-nominated for Becoming) for an intimate conversation moderated by Hunter College professor and Puerto Rican scholar Yarimar Bonilla to unpack the personal, the political, and the problematic, in her new TV project.
Fighting Words is an hour-long special, broken up with a 45-minute stand-up set in the Bronx, where Rodriguez digs into her complicated family dynamics and gives a brutally honest hot take on cancel culture, and a 15-minute documentary where she travels to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic to soul search, awaken, and honor her roots. Written, performed, and co-executive produced by Rodriguez, Fighting Words is in many ways a love letter to her Puerto Rican and Dominican cultures. Rodriguez enlisted Afro-Puerto Rican and Bronx-born Hallgren, and Puerto Rican filmmaker Kristian Mercado (Pa’lante, Nuevo Rico) as directors, hired Puerto Ricans and Dominicans on both islands during production, and passed the mic to emerging Dominican comedians at a stand-up show in Santo Domingo. At the Hudson Yards screening, Rodriguez was dressed in the same cobalt blue power suit she wears in the promo images, exuding the boss comedienne energy of a woman who fully owns and understands her narrative.
Rodriguez’s comedic ministry in Fighting Words revolves around misogyny, sex, dating, family dysfunction, and particularly, anti-Blackness and colorism within Latinx/Latine communities. She candidly describes growing up in a “super religious” family, including Pentecostals and Seventh-Day Adventists who were staunchly anti-abortion. “Until I got pregnant from a Black dude… then they became pro-abortion in the name of Jesus.” This, of course, stems from the all too familiar, all too toxic, and all too harmful three little words commonly heard in Latinx/Latine households: mejorar la raza. Its variations, adelantar la raza, or blanquear la raza, are ugly racist mantras that’ve been ingrained in our heads to routinely center anti-Blackness over and over again within Latinidad. But Rodriguez’s mom wasn’t actually racist towards her Black American son-in-law, because their entire family looked like a ”Benetton ad”, she just didn’t like that he was a Muslim. “‘Cause if you ever want to piss a Puerto Rican mother off, you come home with somebody who doesn’t believe in Jesus or eat pork.”
Race is a social construct that Rodriguez hilariously tackles within her own family, particularly against tired tropes that Latines have long perpetuated. When Rodriguez’s white friend came over for a visit, she was confused by Rodriguez’s half-siblings, who share the same mother, but phenotypically vary in hues and facial features. (A brother named Chino, “I ain’t gotta tell you how he looks;” a sister, “the white one, she gets us in the club;” another brother “who looks Latino, his name is Carlos, of course!”; and Rodriguez herself, “the indigenous/negra, depending on who you’re asking.”) The white friend was further confused when Rodriguez said their father’s name was Colin, “I was like, yeah, colonization bitch!”
Rodriguez is a DominiRican woman warrior who fights hard and loves hard—for her family members, her children, motherhood, and respect. In Fighting Words, she humorously walks us through scenes of potential playground trauma, like when her Puerto Rican mother, Margarita, arrived at her elementary school, demanding, “Where she at? ¿Dónde está la hija de la gran puta que le gusta dar a mi hija?” And proceeded to pop Rodriguez’s white woman kindergarten teacher with a chancletazo for being abusive to her daughter in class. (Said teacher banged a young Rodriguez in the head with oversized wooden pencils). Rodriguez quips about thinking her mom might get arrested and that she’d end up in foster care, “with a white lady who has some apple pie and a cat in the house.” Years later, when Rodriguez’s own son gets jumped in third grade by “future criminals,” she confronts the grade school bullies herself, “And I was like, look, if you ever touch my son again, I’ma kill y’all,” she deadpans into her mic. The next day, one of the bullies' mothers thanked her because her kids never seem to listen to her.
Rodriguez has been fighting for her place in the sun in Hollywood for almost two decades now. Born in Boston and raised between the Dominican Republic, New York, and Miami, at 44, she is striding beautifully in her triumphant moment. Fighting Words is her debut hour long TV comedy special with HBO Max, part of an overall deal which includes an autobiographical scripted series currently in development. Rodriguez’s journey has been long and arduous. After her divorce, she moved from Miami to L.A. and survived seven years of failed acting auditions while pursuing her struggling comic dreams as a cash-strapped single mom living out of her truck and Best Western motel rooms with her two young children. She also lost her beloved grandmother to cancer and her queer uncle to a fatal hate crime within two months of each other. Smaller comedy club open mics, led to larger comedy showcases on TV, like a top ten finish on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, HBO Latino’s Entre Nos stand-up special, and Showtime’s Shaquille O’Neal Presents: All-Star Comedy Jam.
Her rise in comedy stems from those hard won battles. The joys, losses, and vulnerabilities pulled from her life get injected into her material. In addition to systemic battles, as a brown Latina of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, she navigates the world of comedy dominated by straight white bros. Rodriguez combats this through incisive cultural commentary on society’s ‘isms’ and ‘phobias’, via the sharp verbal uppercuts in her sets. As a regular contributor for The Young Turks on YouTube, she consistently sets Karen-type political pundits on fire with her truths. Rodriguez also understands sisterhood in the comedy space, specifically between Black women and women of color. Tiffany Haddish, a close friend and mentor, offered her a half hour episode on her Netflix comedy series They Ready, which showcases up and coming Black and POC comics. As both women built their careers in Hollywood, they would pass each other gigs, and whoever made it first promised to “throw the rope back.” Rodriguez also credits established Black American comics and celebrities like Haddish, Wanda Sykes, and O’Neal (including two Black women on his producing team, Tamra Goins and Valarie Benning Thompson) for creating opportunities for her comedic ascension. It’s a type of solidarity she has received from Black Americans but hasn’t always seen or felt amongst Latinxs.
In Fighting Words, Hallgren and Mercado each expertly stage Rodriguez in her element. Mercado has directed several comedy specials, specifically of Black women comics, including Sam Jay, London Hughes, and Phoebe Robinson. There’s a slickness and sheen to how he captures Rodriguez onstage, she’s both electric and fluid in her stylish white romper. Hallgren captured Rodriguez and her twentysomething son and daughter in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic for the documentary segment of the special, which truthfully is really Fighting Words crowning jewel.
Rodriguez was intent on not representing stereotypes about both islands. In Santo Domingo’s Zona Colonial, in front of colonizer architecture like Alcázar de Colón, Black Dominican musician Enerolisa Núñez, the Queen of Salve, and Grupo de Salve performed Salve and Palo, sacred Afro-Dominican resistance music with Central African (Congo region) roots preserved in Maroon communities for centuries. During her time in DR’s capital, Rodriguez meets her estranged Dominican father for the first time in decades, in an awkward, yet tender exchange. Rodriguez was infamously kidnapped from her father in DR, by her Boricua mother and taken to New York, with pain and confusion wedged between them for years. Hallgren’s camera is gentle and patient from afar as Rodriguez asks her frail-looking father with a long grey ponytail what he’s had to eat today. After their meeting, Rodriguez reflects sagely, “I am enough, even in spite of him not being there, I’m still here.”
Once Rodriguez touches down in Puerto Rico, she lets out a long exhale, and warmly admits, “This is the most precious place on earth to me, this is where my grandmother was from, and my great grandfather who gave me my customs, my food, and my religion.” La Isla del Encanto is clearly one of Rodriguez’s personal sanctuaries, and where she feels the most protected and alive. On the streets of Santurce in San Juan, crowds gathered around Boricua women of various hues dancing traditional Bomba with vibrant energy. In the Old San Juan neighborhood of La Perla, a humble close-knit beach community full of vivid street art and colorful murals, there are pensive scenes of Rodriguez in the ocean, soaking her feet in the glistening clear blue waters. At one point, while bonding with her children in Puerto Rico, Rodriguez asks her young Black daughter if she is seeing herself anywhere, to which the daughter wittily replies, “Not quite, but not not.”
Following the Hudson Yards screening, during the Q&A panel, Hallgren discussed her connection to Rodriguez’s comedy, which comes out of their shared Puertoricanness, similar life experiences, and deep-rooted mutual connections in the industry. She’d watched Rodriguez in past performances, and her nuanced jokes resonated with Hallgren and her family members, which would leave her “crying and laughing at the same time.” Bonilla, the moderator, posed an insightful comment about the meaning behind the title Fighting Words. She viewed it as, “how creative expression and the use of words gives us a fighting chance.” Rodriguez was resolute in her reply, “Fighting Words is fighting up”, she continued, “we keep looking at each other as our problem, when we should be looking up and seeing who has their foot on all of our necks.”
In Fighting Words, Rodriguez unearths deep family ties, revels in being a proud Caribeña, ruminates on her distinct Puerto Rican and Dominican identities, and fights for Latinx culture, relentlessly, despite our divisions and hypocrisies. Because as she sees it, “we are fucking phenomenal.”
Fighting Words is currently streaming on HBO Max.
Jasmin Hernandez (she/her) is the Black Latinx founder and editor in chief of Gallery Gurls. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Paper, Bustle, Elle, Artsy, Sotheby’s and more. She is the debut author of We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World, (Abrams, 2021). She is a born and bred New Yorker born to Dominican parents, based in Harlem, New York City. To learn more follow @gallerygurls.