Argentine Hallmark Star Julie Gonzalo Discusses Network’s Lack Of Diverse Leads

Argentina-born actress Julie Gonzalo joined the Hallmark family in 2016 with the Fall Harvest film “Pumpkin Pie Wars” and has been in two more since then. With a few movies on the network under her belt, she told International Business Times that she’s noticed a couple of things, including Hallmark’s overall lack of diverse leads.

While she absolutely loves working on Hallmark films because of how uplifting they are and because they’re “so empowering to women,” she realized the network could use a little more work in the area of diversity.

“I absolutely have noticed,” she told IBT when asked if she’s seen any diversity issues in Hallmark movies. “It’s unfortunate because it is 2018 and it is time to really just diversify everything.”

In 2017, Hallmark premiered a combined 86 new movies between its two networks, Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries (HMM), but only six of those movies had non-white romantic leads. Of those, the number of African American and Asian romantic leads came to a grand total of zero.

When IBT spoke with William (Bill) Abbott, the president and CEO of Crown Media Family Networks, the parent company of the Hallmark networks, about this topic in December, he opened up about how Hallmark plans to continue to make progress in this area, but he added that it won’t happen overnight.

“I feel like this is an industry-wide problem,” Abbott told IBT. “Others have made a little more progress than we have made, granted, but, at the same time, certainly we, as a brand and as an organization, we have a great track record of doing the right thing and I think that you will see significant change over the years as we continue to evolve our content.”

He continued: “This is one of our major initiatives and major focuses,” Abbott said. “I don’t want to put a number to it, but we are always looking to make the world a better place and this is a key part of it. It’s top of mind and we’re certainly focused on it.”

As of this past weekend, 17 new Hallmark Channel and HMM films have premiered in 2018, with two of those having non-white leads. Gonzalo’s “The Sweetest Heart” on Hallmark Channel, which premiered a couple weeks ago, is one of them, and Holly Robinson Peete’s “Morning Show Mystery: Mortal Mishaps,” released in January on HMM, is the other.

Even though Gonzalo is glad to be a Latina on TV, she said that there are issues with her being one of the select few on Hallmark, namely that she can easily pass as white.

“I’m Latina, I’m proud to be Latina, but, in a sense, I am also the whitest Latina,” she said. “In a way, it’s like, it needs to be a bit more pronounced. I think it needs to show a little bit more. I’m kind of an exception in that way because I don’t look it…To me, it’s like, I’m 100 percent South American. I was born and raised in Argentina, left when I was nine. I consider myself Hispanic. I’ve never considered myself anything else. I just look white.”

She continued: “It’s a hard place for me because I am such an oddity, in a sense, because I am Hispanic, sure, I check that box, but when you look at me, you don’t see Hispanic. I’m very aware of it.”

Within the realm of diversity, Gonzalo also feels that work can be done on making sure that a minority actor’s on-screen family represents their background, thus not having the actor passing as white. Aside from Gonzalo, this has happened with Meghan Markle, who’s biracial yet has solely white family members in her movies.

Though Abbott said there was “certainly” no intention when Markle was cast that they were “going to turn her background into a situation that was not diverse,” it’s something that could have been intentionally avoided.

“That’s another thing, why,” Gonzalo wondered when the non-matching family members were brought up. “Can we work a little bit on that, as well? Like, why can’t these characters be portrayed a little bit more and actually diverse the whole family? And it’s funny because out of all the people that [IBT] listed, I think I may be the only foreigner, like legit foreigner… I am 100 percent South American, so, there is that, too. I mean, I think that there’s still a lot of work to be done. In a lot of ways.”

The actress loves doing Hallmark films and enjoys being part of the family, but she simply feels that there are few improvements to diversity that could be made. That said, she’s happy to help and has ideas for the network on that front.

“I think that, hopefully, this year and the next, [it will get better] and I have some ideas, as well, to bring to the channel, to diverse it a little bit more, to see it a little bit more,” she said. “I think people need to see it, to visualize it, to agree with and to kind of learn like, ‘Oh, that is the world we live in.’”