Diane Guerrero

What makes a superhero? A voice, a cause and a will to change the world. The actress-activist, who headlines the HBO Max premiere of DC’s Doom Patrol, has all three and isn’t backing down.

- SAMANTA HELOU HERNANDEZ

Q1: Orange Is the New Black gave you your most notable role to date — Maritza Ramos, one of Litchfield Penitentiary’s original inmates. On the show’s final season, which debuted on Netflix in July, Ramos is deported to Colombia, mirroring what happened to your parents nearly two decades ago, when you were 14 years old. How did you prepare for those scenes?

GUERRERO: I didn’t have to look far to understand what it would be like for my character to be in jail once again, to be taken away. I know what that’s like. My mom was taken in handcuffs to the airport and loaded up on a plane. It’s something I’ve lived with my entire life. It’s desperate; it’s lonely. So I tried to go back to that time. Honestly, because of the work I’m doing today, I’m back there all the time. It was cathartic.

Q2: So it wasn’t retraumatizing?

GUERRERO: No, no, no. What’s retraumatizing is knowing that some fucking guy went to a Walmart and shot up people because he thought there was an invasion of Mexicans, because of what our president has said. That’s retraumatizing. That instills fear in me that my life can be taken away at any time. Portraying it artistically, or even retelling my story, as hard as that is at times, is a means to an end. That’s not retraumatizing.

Q3: You revealed your parents’ deportation in a 2014 op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, and in 2016 you released a memoir, In the Country We Love, about growing up in the U.S. without them. What motivated you to share your story and become an activist for immigration reform?