CULTURE

Gina Rodriguez Will Use Emmy Money to Send Undocumented Student to College

Jack Xiong June 19, 2018

“Jane the Virgin” star Gina Rodriguez is forgoing her Emmy Awards campaign to fund an aspiring college student’s education instead.

In preparation for the 2018 Emmy nominations that will be announced in July, standard protocol involves major TV networks and studios spending massive amounts of money in the preceding months to bankroll “For Your Consideration” (FYC) campaigns for their submitted actors, creators, and shows.

This year, Rodriguez has convinced her home station The CW to invest in something else: a college scholarship for an undocumented high school student.

Rodriguez, who’s also a member of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s board of directors since 2015, partnered with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles to locate a Latinx high school student who plans to attend Princeton University in the fall. With Rodriguez’s support, the student (who’ll remain unnamed) will be able to complete a four-year degree without financial burden.

It’s unclear whether the college-bound recipient of Rodriguez’s scholarship will be a beneficiary of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM) Act.

“FYC is a bizarre dance,” Rodriguez told The Hollywood Reporter of the yearly Emmy campaign. “Whatever you do requires an insane amount of money.”

Often, the spending is to no avail since there is only a limited number of nominees for each category at the awards. Indeed, Rodriguez has never received an Emmy nomination for her role on “Jane the Virgin,” which debuted in 2014 on The CW.

She did, however, win a Golden Globe in 2015, and has since been nominated twice more at the Globes in the same category. “Jane the Virgin” will return for its fifth and final season next year.

“Our show has always jumped at any opportunity to help me do something for the Latinx community,” said Rodriguez. “So I asked my showrunner, Jennie [Snyder Urman], if we could do something different with the money this year.”

“Jane the Virgin” has also dug deep into Latinx identity and immigration issues throughout its acclaimed run. In one storyline the series tackled, Jane’s grandmother, Alba, sought a path toward citizenship after being in the country undocumented for 40 years.