Digital Cover: Gabriela Quezada
Talent: Gabriela Quezada
Photos: Timothy Fernandez
Stylist: Tabitha Sanchez
Makeup: Melissa Hernandez
Hair: Rena Calhoun
Producer: Chrissy Wang
EIC + Words: Anthony Vu Cao
Meet rising star Gabriela Quezada, one of the main cast of CW’s series Walker Independence. Quezada plays Lucia Reyes; the daughter of a rancher and the girlfriend of an outlaw, Lucia carves out her own path in the town of Independence. Quezada’s previous television credits include guest-starring roles on 9-1-1, Schooled and The Goldbergs.
Gabriela talks to us about her role in Walker Independence, representation, transition from modeling to acting, fashion sense and diet.
Walker: Independence, a Walker origin story, is set in the late 1800s in a town where eclectic residents are running from their own troubled pasts and chasing their dreams. What initially drew you to the project?
When I first auditioned for the project, I didn't know much about Lucia other than what is in the pilot so I had no idea where her storyline would go. But what I did get from the pilot was that Lucia was somebody who wants more than just the small life her family expects her to live and that she needs to find a way to balance honoring herself and her desires without completely abandoning her family. I think this struggle is very much relevant today amongst women where self-denial is still so deeply rooted in our gender norms. When this project came along I thought what a fun way to be able to explore this struggle and even more so in the late 1800s!
What have you enjoyed most about being in a Western and how do you think the Wild West acts as a symbol to every character’s understanding of identity?
What's most exciting to me about being in a Western is the idea that people during this time had to make it up as they went along. The construction of America's identity took place during the 1800s with western expansion, Native Americans and Mexicans being displaced, and people from different cultures interacting for the first time. With Independence being a railroad town there is a constant mixing of new cultures and new ideas and with that new questions and questioning of identity. It's fun to see how each character deals with the environment constantly in a state of flux.
The show reinvents the Western genre through the inclusion of people historically left at the margins of such depictions. How does it feel to be a part of this movement?
It's exciting! Not to take away from some of the great Westerns of the past, but I was never a big Western fan because as I am realizing now I think I was subconsciously disinterested in watching another story about white men. America is what it is today because of the mixing of cultures which took place during this time so why wouldn't that be shown in a Western?! America has an extremely violent past which also is often erased in most older Westerns so my hope is that as this show goes on it will dare to dig deeper into some of the harsher realities of America's past.
What sets Lucia Reyes apart from other characters you’ve played in the past?
Well first off I have never done a period piece before! Nor have I ever worked on a character that gets to have an arc over a whole season. So just those two things alone are new and exciting! It's fun to work on a coming of age story during a time where traditional gender roles often informed the trajectory of a woman's life.
What initially drew you to becoming an actor and if you had to choose one moment when you realized you were meant to be in the acting business, what would it be?
To be honest I was terrified of the idea of speaking in front of the camera, especially coming from the modeling world where you literally and figuratively have no voice. So acting was the last thing I thought I would end up doing. However, I somehow mustered up the courage to take some acting classes, which was terrifying but also so exciting to me when I started to discover that I could actually bring myself to the work and through that I began to find my voice which was shut down for so long.
If you could describe your fashion style in three words, what three would you use?
casual, versatile, and (ideally) effortless
After a long day of filming, what is the first thing you do when you go home?
Eat. Usually cereal and chocolate and a banana.
With storytelling at the core of all your performances, what stories are you most looking forward to telling through your next projects?
That's a hard question because there are so many! I recently worked on a film where I played a sort of femme fatale character which was super fun and made me realize how much more I'd like to continue to explore roles with "gender bending" characteristics that challenge the norm of women having to be nice and pleasant. I am drawn to darker roles, tragic heroes, unsuspecting underdogs, calculating women, avengers, flawed characters...all of this excites me. GR8T
